The following is from the introduction to my new co-authored book (with Paul Elam) of collected writings on chivalry. The book includes updated versions of previously published essays, and two excellent contributions by Paul Elam including a newly transcribed article Death By Chivalry: Portland Edition. You can purchase the eBook here, and the paperback here, or simply click on the cover picture below. – PW.
FROM THE INTRODUCTION
The importance of chivalry is taught to little girls and boys from the start, outlining for them the various rules of male obligation that will guide sexual relations throughout their lifetimes; i.e., males are here to protect and provide.
The victories of legendary cinematic heroes whose brave deeds are rounded with applause and happily-ever-afters appears to seal the fate of chivalry as the future path of every man.
Those few who do pause to question chivalry’s values however – its rote expectation of male sacrifice, possibility of danger or injury, impacts on mental health, potential for exploitation and abuse, or the question of valid compensations for ongoing sacrifices – may conclude that it serves as a poor life map, or worse that it amounts to a malignant and toxic form of masculinity.
This book examines the realities of chivalry beyond the usual platitudes and cliches to see what’s really at stake for men in the present zeitgeist. The essays, written by men’s advocates Peter Wright and Paul Elam, survey the roots of the chivalric tradition and examine real life examples of chivalry in action.
Chapters include:
1. The Birth Of Chivalric Love
2. A Bastardized Chivalry
3. What Ever Happened To Chivalry?
4. Sporting Tournaments: ‘It Will Make A Man Out Of You’
5. Intervening for women
6. Chivalry: A Learned Deathwish
7. Death By Chivalry: Portland Edition
8. Aggrieved Entitlement: Women’s Reaction to Temporary Loss Of Chivalry
9. Can A Woman Be Chivalrous?
“Chivalry, as understood by Modern Sentimental Feminism, means unlimited licence for women in their relations with men, and unlimited coercion for men in their relations with women. To men all duties and no rights, to women all rights and no duties, is the basic principle underlying Modern Feminism, Suffragism, and the bastard chivalry it is so fond of invoking.” – (Bax, 1913, p. 141)
In 1913 English barrister Ernest B. Bax observed that chivalry had undergone an alteration or, as he understood it, a corruption from its earlier intent of deference to weakness. (Bax, 1913). He contended that the original definition was no longer current since in its modern application the question of a person’s sex took precedence over that of weakness proper. Instead of chivalry being directed to the care and protection of children, frail elders, the disabled, or the wounded in battle as in earlier times, Bax understood the new chivalry as being confined strictly to “sex privilege and sex favouritism pure and simple.” (Bax, 1913, p. 100).
The claim of chivalry being redirected along predominantly sexual lines is confirmed by most modern dictionaries, for example in the Cambridge Dictionary which defines it as ‘Very polite, honest, and kind behaviour, especially toward women.’ (Dictionary C, 2015). Following in the footsteps of Bax the following essay will explore the gendered facets of “bastard chivalry,” focusing on its promotion of sex-favouritism and associated impacts on male health.
The emergence and divergence of ‘two chivalries’
The earliest meaning of chivalry referred to a code of behaviour followed by medieval knights of Europe, the word itself being derived from Old French chevalerie, from medieval Latin caballerius meaning ‘horseman’ (Dictionary O.E., 2008). As Bax observes;
“The term meant originally the virtues associated with knighthood considered as a whole, bravery even to the extent of reckless daring, loyalty to the chief or feudal superior, generosity to a fallen foe, general open-handedness, and open-heartedness, including, of course, the succour of the weak and the oppressed generally, inter alia, the female sex when in difficulties… [O]nly a fragment of the original connotation of the word chivalry is covered by the term as used in our time, and that even that fragment is torn from its original connection and is made to serve as a scarecrow in the field of public opinion to intimidate all who refuse to act upon, or who protest against, the privileges and immunities of the female sex.” (Bax, 1913, pp. 100-101)
The variation referred to by Bax can be traced back to an emerging culture of courtly love and its harnessing of chivalry to new ends, which in the West is a development of the twelfth century. According to historian Jennifer G. Wollock of Texas University, “the idea that love is ennobling and necessary for the education of a knight comes out of the lyrics of this period, but also in the romances of knighthood. Here the truest lovers are now the best knights.” (Wollock, 2011, p. 42)
In that historical context chivalry was subjected to a new contextual application, taken up by an emerging culture of courtly love in which men were taught to direct their chivalric cares, concern, protection, obedience, and service exclusively to women (Alfonsi, 1986). Over the course of two centuries there emerged two distinctly differentiated versions of chivalry: a continuing military chivalry with its code of conduct and proper contexts, and a romantic chivalry complete with its code of conduct and proper contexts.
It is difficult to pinpoint when the culture of romantic chivalry constellated and found relative independence from its military forerunner, but the evidence of troubadour poetry, romance fiction (Yalom, 2012), and etiquette manuals (Cappelanus, 1990) detailing the elaborate conventions of romantic chivalry attest to its emergence by the end of the twelfth century. Central to that revolution was the imperial patronage of Eleanor of Aquitaine and her daughter Marie de Champagne who together elaborated the military notion of chivalry into one of servicing ladies.
Prior to the twelfth century romantic chivalry did not exist as a gendered construct; it was in the Middle Ages that it developed cultural complexity and became the enduring cultural norm we inherit today. The following timeline details the birth of romantic chivalry along with significant historical events that promoted its survival:
1102 AD: Romantic chivalry first introduced
William IX, Duke of Aquitaine, the most powerful feudal lord in France, wrote the first troubadour poems and is widely considered the first troubadour. Parting with the tradition of fighting wars strictly on behalf of man, king, God and country, William is said to have had the image of his mistress painted on his shield, whom he called midons (my Lord) saying that it was his will to bear her in battle, as she had borne him in bed.
1152 AD: Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine invites poet Bernard de Ventadorn to compose songs of love for her and her husband, Henry II. The songs lay down a code of chivalric behaviour for how a good man should treat his “lady,” which Eleanor employs in an apparent attempt to civilize her husband and his male associates. Eleanor and other noblewomen began to encourage poetic narratives that set expectations on how men should act around them (School of Life, 2011).
1168 – 1198 AD: The romantic chivalry trope is elaborated and given imperial patronage by Eleanor and her daughter Marie. At Eleanor’s court in Poitiers Eleanor and Marie embroidered the Christian military code of chivalry with a code for romantic lovers, thus putting women at the center of courtly life – and in doing so they had permanently changed the face of chivalry (McKnight, 1994).
1170 AD: Eleanor and Marie established the formal Courts of Love presided over by themselves and a jury of 60 noble ladies who would investigate and hand down judgements on love-disputes according to the newly introduced code governing gender relations. The courts were modelled precisely along the lines of the traditional feudal courts where disputes between retainers had been settled by the powerful lord. In this case however the disputes were between lovers (McKnight, 1994).
1180 AD: Marie directs Chrétien de Troyes to write Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart, a love story about Lancelot and Guinevere elaborating the nature of romantic chivalry. Chrétien de Troyes objected to the implicit approval of the adulterous affair between Lancelot and Guinevere that Marie had directed him to write about and failed to finish it, but later poets completed the story on Chrétien’s behalf. Chrétien also wrote other famous romances including Erec and Enide(McKnight, 1994).
1188 AD: Marie directs her chaplain Andreas Capellanus to write The Art of Courtly Love. This guide to the chivalric codes of romantic love is a document that could pass as contemporary in almost every respect, excepting for the outdated class structures and assumptions. Many of the admonitions in Andreas textbook are believed to have come from the women who directed the writing (McKnight, 1994).
1180 – 1380 AD: In two hundred years the culture or romantic chivalry spread from France to become instituted in all the principle courts of Europe, and went on to capture the imagination of men, women and children of all social classes. According to Jennifer Wollock (2011), the continuing popularity of chivalric love stories is confirmed by the contents of women’s libraries of the late Middle Ages, literature which had a substantial female readership including mothers reading to their daughters. Aside from the growing access to literature, chivalric culture values spread via everyday interactions among people in which they shared the ideas.
The aristocratic classes who first developed the romantic chivalry trope did not exist in a vacuum. The courtly themes they enacted would most certainly have captured the imaginations of the lower classes though public displays of pomp and pageantry, troubadours and tournaments, minstrels and playwrights, the telling of romantic stories, and of course the gossip flowing everywhere which would have exerted a powerful effect on the peasant imagination (Wright 2014).
It is possible that those of even lower classes adopted some assumptions portrayed in the public displays, such as the importance of chivalrous behavior toward women and perhaps a belief in women’s purity and moral superiority. Certainly by the 1600s and beyond, the adaptation of romantic chivalry by lower classes was in full career, as evidenced by Lucrezia Marinella who provides an example of Venetian society from the year 1600:
It is a marvelous sight in our city to see the wife of a shoemaker or butcher or even a porter all dressed up with gold chains round her neck, with pearls and valuable rings on her fingers, accompanied by a pair of women on either side to assist her and give her a hand, and then, by contrast, to see her husband cutting up meat all soiled with ox’s blood and down at heel, or loaded up like a beast of burden dressed in rough cloth, as porters are.
At first it may seem an astonishing anomaly to see the wife dressed like a lady and the husband so basely that he often appears to be her servant or butler, but if we consider the matter properly, we find it reasonable because it is necessary for a woman, even if she is humble and low, to be ornamented in this way because of her natural dignity and excellence, and for the man to be less so, like a servant or beast born to serve her.
Women have been honored by men with great and eminent titles that are used by them continually, being commonly referred to as donne, for the name donna means lady and mistress. When men refer to women thus, they honor them, though they may not intend to, by calling them ladies, even if they are humble and of a lowly disposition. In truth, to express the nobility of this sex men could not find a more appropriate and fitting name than donna, which immediately shows women’s superiority and precedence over men, because by calling women mistress they [men] show themselves of necessity to be subjects and servants (Marinella, 1999).
While popular recognition of the ‘two chivalries’ ran concurrently over several hundred years, the notion of military chivalry would eventually be relegated to obscurity in popular discourse as described in the observations above by Bax and evidenced by definitions in modern dictionaries.
Ideological structure of romantic chivalry
Romantic chivalry is alluded to by alternative terms such as benevolent sexism, romantic love, gentlemanliness, courtesy, gallantry, heroism, or simply chivalry. The practice has roots in what some scholars have referred to as chivalric ‘love service,’ (Bennett, 2013) a ritualized form of devotion by men toward women popularized by troubadours in the Middle Ages. The earliest conceptualization of love service borrowed from the vocabulary of medieval feudalism, mimicking ties between a liegeman and his overlord; i.e., the male lover is referred to as homo ligius (the woman’s liegeman, or ‘my man’) who pledged honor, and servitium (service) to the lady via a posture of feudal homage. The lady was addressed as midons (literally ‘my lord’), and also by dominus (denoting the feudal Lady) (Alfonsi, 1986). These practices form the ideological taproot of modern romantic chivalry.
The conventions and indeed the lived practices of romantic chivalry celebrated first among the upper classes made their way by degrees eventually to the middle classes and finally to the lower classes – or rather they broke class structure altogether in the sense that all Western peoples became inheritors of the customs regardless of their social station. Today chivalry is a norm observed across the majority of global cultures, an explicitly gynocentric norm aimed to increase the comfort, safety and power of women, while affording men a sense of purpose and occasional heroism in addressing that same task (Wright, 2014).
C.S. Lewis referred to the growth of romantic chivalry as “the feudalisation of love,” (Lewis, 2013, p. 2) making the observation that it has left no corner of our ethics, our imagination, or our daily life untouched. He observed that European society has moved essentially from a social feudalism, involving a contractual arrangement between a feudal lord and his vassal, to a sexual feudalism involving a comparable contract between men and women as symbolized in the act of a man going down on one knee to propose marriage (Wright, 2014).
Education in chivalry through the use of shame
The education and transmission of chivalry from generation to generation is overseen by parents, teachers and peers, and is reinforced by a plethora of culture-mediums including social media, mainstream media, political narratives, romance novels, music, cinema and the arts. Through these mediums romantic chivalry is internalized by young girls and boys as models of expected gendered behaviour.
An early example appears in the 1825 volume The History of Chivalry or Knighthood and Its Times, describing the education of a boy in the expectations of romantic chivalry. The author tells that in Medieval Europe the intellectual and moral education of boys in the chivalric code was given by the time they turned seven years by the ladies of the court:
“From the lips of the ladies the gentle page learned both his catechism and the art of love, and as the religion of the day was full of symbols, and addressed to the senses, so the other feature of his devotion was not to be nourished by abstract contemplation alone. He was directed to regard some one lady of the court as the type of his heart’s future mistress; she was the centre of all his hopes and wishes; to her he was obedient, faithful, and courteous.” (Mills, 1825, pp. 32-33)
To illustrate such education we are provided an anecdote of a young boy named Jean de Saintre, page of honour at the court of the French king. A Dame des Belles Cousines enquired of the boy ‘the name of the mistress of his heart’s affections’:
The simple youth replied, that he loved his lady mother, and next to her, his sister Jacqueline was dear to him. “Young man,” rejoined the lady, “I am not speaking of the affection due to your mother and sister; but I wish to know the name of the lady to whom you are attached par amours.” The poor boy was still more confused, and he could only reply that he loved no one par amours.
The Dame des Belles Cousines charged him with being a traitor to the laws of chivalry, and declared that his craven spirit was evinced by such an avowal. “Whence,” she enquired, “sprang the valiancy and knightly feats of Launcelot, Gawain, Tristram, Giron the courteous, and other ornaments of the round table of Ponthus, and of those knights and squires of this country whom I could enumerate: whence the grandeur of many whom I have known to arise to renown, except from the noble desire of maintaining themselves in the grace and esteem of the ladies; without which spirit-stirring sentiment they must have ever remained in the shades of obscurity? And do you, coward valet, presume to declare that you possess no sovereign lady, and desire to have none?”
Jean underwent a long scene of persecution on account of his confession of the want of proper chivalric sentiment, but he was at length restored to favour by the intercession of the ladies of the court. He then named as his mistress Matheline de Coucy, a child only ten years old. (Mills, 1825, pp. 32-33)
The pressure applied to the boy of this account, including shaming responses for his non-conformity, provide testament to the pressures that accompanied, and continue to accompany, deviance from the dictates of romantic chivalry. Education of this kind is common on social media today where read commentaries about “unchivalrous” males who by their failures become the subject of mockery and shame (a Google search for unchivalrous co-occurs with the word ‘shame’ 54,900 times; ‘ashamed’ 23,400; ‘pathetic’ 31,000; ‘loser’ 14,500; and ‘unmanly’ 9,960 times respectively). (Google, 2018)
A recent example of a shaming narrative serving as an educative prompt appeared in the online Conservative Woman (Perrins, 2018). The article recounted an incident from the year 1989 when 25-year-old gunman Marc Lépine entered the École Polytechnique armed with a semi-automatic rifle and ordered the males and females to form into separate groups. He then began killing several women and injuring some of the men. The author lamented that these men “abandoned” the women in an “act of abdication” that would have been unthinkable in previous, more chivalric periods of history. The author admits she was “pretty shocked that the men left,” and finally blames “the collapse of protective masculinity” as a preventable factor in the deaths of those women.
Regarding younger children, a search for chivalry and related terms such as “knight” “damsel in distress” and “princess” in the children’s section of Amazon Books website (for ages 2–12) generated over 10,000 results, revealing that a fascination with medieval gender roles remains popular with children and their parents today, a result that can be multiplied with the addition of teenage and adult books in the same genre (Amazon, 2018). One example titled Noisy Knights (for boys aged 2-5) shows pictures of a distressed damsel menaced by a fire-breathing dragon (the book includes a battery operated button to make her scream in audio) (Taplin, 2010). The text asks the reader if he knows of any knight who might be brave enough to save her, a question clearly designed to lead young male reader to volunteer service, imagining himself stepping into a position of danger to protect the damsel and reduce her distress.
Noisy Knights (Taplin, 2010, P. 5-6) invites young male readers to identify with a ‘damsel-saving’ knight
Romantic chivalry is further popularized in video games and Disney movies, for example, which are bestsellers among children in the digital age. Many themes of romantic chivalry appear charming in isolation from their real-world implications, a delight to the imagination, however as the field of narrative psychology likes to remind; our identities consist of such stuff as dreams are made. The stories that children and adults absorb are the stories they enact, and in this case there is potential for men and boys to enact them to the neglect of their health, safety, dignity and larger human potential (Wright & Elam, 2017, p. 29-31).
Benevolent Sexism
In the field of sociology chivalry remains a much-researched topic, though renamed and problematized under the heading ‘benevolent sexism.’ According to P. Glick et.al (2000), the attitudes tapped in the Benevolent Sexism Scale are closer to medieval ideologies of chivalry than they are to other modern social or political movements. Benevolent Sexism (often shortened humorously to ‘BS’) is rooted in the traditional culture-structures guiding personal relationships between men and women and is not an outcome of contemporary politics, even when reinforced by political discourse and encoded in legislation (Glick, et.al., 2000).
Benevolent sexism is described as the expression of reverence and care toward women while promising they will be protected and provided for by men, and is thus experienced subjectively by women as an agreeable form of sexism (Hammond, et.al., 2014). Moreover, research has shown that these attitudes objectively do benefit women because men who express agreement with benevolent sexism are generally more caring, satisfying, and positive relationship partners (Hammond, et.al., 2014).
In their study aptly titled The Allure of Sexism, Matthew D. Hammond et.al. (2014) researched whether a sense of entitlement to special treatments—a central facet of narcissism based on feelings of superiority and deservingness—was linked with endorsement of benevolent sexism by women across time:
‘If women endorse benevolent sexism because of the individual-level benefits it offers, then women’s endorsement of benevolent sexism should vary depending on dispositional differences in psychological entitlement. Psychological entitlement is a core facet of narcissism, which encompasses feelings that the self deserves nice things, social status and praise, and beliefs of the self as superior, highly intelligent, and attractive (Campbell, Bonacci, Shelton, Exline & Bushman, 2004; Campbell, Brunell, & Finkel, 2006; Emmons, 1987; Miller & Campbell, 2010). The model of narcissistic self-regulation characterizes psychological entitlement as manifesting in efforts to gain esteem, status, and resources (Campbell & Foster, 2007; Campbell et al., 2006; Morf & Rhodewalt, 2001). Such efforts include adopting a superficially charming, confident, and energetic approach to social interactions (Foster, Shrira, & Campbell, 2006; Paulhus, 1998), taking personal responsibility for successes and attributing failures to external sources (Chowning & Campbell, 2009; Rhodewalt & Morf, 1998), and acting selfishly to secure material gains even when it means exploiting others (Campbell et al., 2004; Campbell, Bush, Brunell, & Shelton, 2005).’ (Hammond, et.al., 2014, p. 2).
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the study found that a psychological sense of entitlement in women does mediate endorsement of benevolent sexism. Moreover, the researchers theorized that characteristics of narcissistic entitlement – those which drive resource-attainment and self-enhancement strategies – are the same qualities that promote women’s adoption of benevolent sexism:
‘First, benevolent sexism facilitates the capacity to gain material resources and complements feelings of deservingness by promoting a structure of intimate relationships in which men use their access to social power and status to provide for women (Chen et al., 2009). Second, benevolent sexism reinforces beliefs of superiority by expressing praise and reverence of women, emphasizing qualities of purity, morality, and culture which make women the ‘‘fairer sex.’’ Indeed, identifying with these kinds of gender-related beliefs (e.g., women are warm) fosters a more positive self-concept (Rudman, Greenwald, & McGhee, 2001).
Moreover, for women higher in psychological entitlement, benevolent sexism legitimizes a self-centric approach to relationships by emphasizing women’s special status within the intimate domain and men’s responsibilities of providing and caring for women. Such care involves everyday chivalrous behaviors, such as paying on a first date and opening doors for women (Sarlet et al., 2012; Viki et al., 2003), to more overarching prescriptions for men’s behavior toward women, such as being ‘‘willing to sacrifice their own well-being’’ to provide for women and to ensure women’s happiness by placing her ‘‘on a pedestal’’ (Ambivalent Sexism Inventory; Glick & Fiske, 1996). Thus, women higher in psychological entitlement should be particularly enticed by benevolent sexism because it justifies provision and praise from men as expected behavior and does not require women to reciprocate the reverence or material gains, which men provide.’ (Hammond, et.al., 2014, pp. 3-4).
While the Hammond study describes the sense of entitlement by women in terms of narcissistic motivation, it is more accurately termed gynocentric based on the exclusively gendered context, i.e. woman as center of the relational contract who feels deserving of benevolent gestures from men and boys. While deservingness is an integral feature of narcissism, the concept of gynocentrism provides more specificity than does narcissism because women may not feel entitled, for example, to special treatment by non-intimate males nor by other women (as compared to an individual scoring high on standard narcissism scales), reserving instead the sense of entitlement for intimate gendered relationships. The gendered context of women’s sense of entitlement is confirmed by studies showing that women tend to score lower than men on global narcissism scales (Grijalva, et.al., 2013), however such measures fail to take into account the exclusively gendered domain in which benevolent sexism operates and in which the level of female narcissism may be much higher.
A 2018 survey of 782 female subjects found women believe male partners displaying benevolent sexist attitudes are more willing to protect, provide for, and commit to them, which in turn rendered those men more attractive. Interestingly, feminist women were just as likely as non-feminist women to prefer benevolently sexist men over more egalitarian men regardless of whether they rated themselves as high or low feminists. High feminists rated the benevolent sexist men as more patronizing and undermining than did low feminists, but felt the positive sides of benevolent sexism outweighed the negatives (Gul & Kupfer, 2018).
Societal chivalry
Beyond the relational sphere, chivalric customs are utilized to facilitate more empowerment of women via the initiatives of national and international governing bodies. This can be witnessed for example in anti-violence campaigns such as the White Ribbon initiative in Australia which asks men to “Stand up, speak out, and act” to ensure the dignity, safety and comfort of any women, even strangers, who might find themselves in real or imagined danger (Seymour, 2018).
We witness it again internationally in the HeForShe campaign initiated by UN Women Ambassador Emma Watson, who in her introductory speech appealed to feminist oversight of gendered matters six times, and then to the importance of men offering their chivalric support to women’s empowerment: “I want men to take up this mantle. So their daughters, sisters and mothers can be free from prejudice… I am inviting you to step forward, to be seen to speak up, to be the ‘he’ for ‘she.’ And to ask yourself if not me, who? If not now, when?” (Watson, 2014).
Chivalry operates outside the interpersonal sphere in which men have traditionally given up their seats in buses, whereby governments are now providing seats for women in legislative assemblies and in boardrooms via quotas. Similarly the act of a man opening a door for a woman is now enacted by governments who open doors for women into universities and workforces via the practice of affirmative action (Wright, 2017). Indeed chivalry has arguably been exploited to meet objectives of women’s empowerment since at least the time of Bax, who in the year 1887 contended that “It is all very well to say they [feminists] repudiate chivalry. They are ready enough to invoke it politically when they want to get a law passed in their favour – while socially, to my certain knowledge, many of them claim it as a right every whit as much as ordinary women.” (Bax, 1887, p. 114-121).
Negative health outcomes for men and boys
Men and boys who enact chivalric masculinity may pay a considerable price in the process, psychologically, socially or physically. Romantic chivalry emphasizes protection of women (Dictionary Y, 2018), thus men are placed in danger of being injured, maimed or killed when “intervening” in difficult situations such as those evoked by the White Ribbon initiatives, or while working in the male dominated professions of military, police, and firefighters for whom acts of benevolent sexism are celebrated.
The masculine norm of stoicism (Murray, et.al., 2008) involving the repression of emotion and the cultivation of indifference to pleasure or pain serves maintain men’s chivalric focus on women’s assumed need for support, protection and male deference. Conversely, if a man or boy becomes focused on his own emotions, pain, pleasure or needs, he risks being viewed as a poor protector and provider (i.e. less chivalrous), which will be likely met with social shaming if not outright violence as modes of punishing transgressions and encouraging compliance.
The gendered morality of chivalry dictates that men and boys receive less compassion and assistance than their female counterparts (Eagly & Crowley, 1986), are more likely to be viewed as suitable targets for infliction of violence, pain and other harm (Feldman-Hall, et.al., 2016), are more likely to receive harsher legal penalties than women for offenses (Curry, et.al., 2004), and conversely perpetrators of crime against males are more likely to receive lenient sentences as compared to those who perpetrate crimes against women who receive the longest sentences (Curry, et.al., 2004).Males who suffer disability or mental illness are more often stigmatized and treated with less ‘chivalric’ compassion or positivity than their female counterparts (Whitley, et.al., 2015). The differential gender outcomes in these examples demonstrate that romantic chivalry fosters a ‘sympathy-deficit’ toward males and their issues, and a conversely heightened concern for women’s issues. This gender-preferential bias has been referred to as gynosympathy (Wright, 2016), a practice that negatively impacts men’s willingness to seek help and assistance when needed (Eagly & Crowley, 1986).
The employment of traditional sex-role strategies (inclusive of stoicism and chivalry) increase the likelihood of male depression (Addis, 2008; Batty, 2006, Liljegren, 2010, Oliffe, & Phillips, 2008), anxiety, stress, and poorer health behaviors (Eisler, et.al., 1998), suicide (Houle, et.al., 2008), and accidental death (Stillion & McDowell, 2002), however the precise degree to which chivalry contributes to these outcomes requires further research.
Summary and conclusion
The chivalry surveyed in this essay is both sexist and gynocentric in nature, one that demands men provide numerous psychological gratifications and material benefits to recipient women. Enactment of chivalric behaviours may also provide secondary benefits for men and boys, such as increased social/peer approval and greater access to female romantic partners (Hammond, et.al., 2014). The chivalric role offers heterosexual men a life-map to guide their social behaviour while providing a sense of self based on service to women. This in contrast to socially disapproved identities such as ‘unchivalrous’ males, voluntarily confirmed bachelors (Holland, 1959), or alternatively to gay or transgender men whose identities are not built on service to women (Polimeni, et.al., 2000; Nagoshi, et.al., 2008).
Men adhering to chivalric behaviour are rewarded with social valorization, and in the more extreme examples are praised as selfless “heroes” for which medals are awarded by mainstream social institutions. On the negative side of the equation there may be a lack of recognition for ongoing sacrifices – chivalry as rote expectation, an assigned role, codified and reinforced with shame. In both adhering, and in failing to adhere to the dictates of romantic chivalry, the cumulative psychosocial burden on men may be considerable – including negative mental and physical health impacts as outlined above.
In an age of equality one might ask what continuing relevance has romantic chivalry? If we follow the definition of chivalry in the Cambridge Dictionary as a “very polite, honest, and kind behaviour,” is it still necessary to add the usual adjunct “…especially by men toward women”? Omission of the gendered framing shifts the emphasis toward extending a universal politeness, honesty, and kindness toward all peoples, reviving the older sense of chivalry from which romantic chivalry originally diverged to become the dominant or “bastardized” meaning.
Such an amendment would free men and boys to discover a variety of non-gynocentric masculinities, and revive the notion of ‘common courtesy’ as a basis for reciprocal service and devotion between men and women. Mainstream commenters occasionally pay lip service to the idea of de-genderizing chivalry (Waldman, 2013), but until such time as that sentiment is actualized in popular culture we might conclude with a rephrasing of Emma Watson’s HeForShe proposition and ask; “I am inviting you to step forward, to be seen to speak up, to be the “we” for “all.” And to ask yourself if not me, who? If not now, when?”
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Glick, P., Fiske, S. T., Mladinic, A., Saiz, J. L., Abrams, D., Masser, B., … & Annetje, B. (2000). Beyond prejudice as simple antipathy: hostile and benevolent sexism across cultures. Journal of personality and social psychology, 79(5), 763.
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Gul, P., & Kupfer, T. R. (2018). Benevolent Sexism and Mate Preferences: Why Do Women Prefer Benevolent Men Despite Recognizing That They Can Be Undermining?. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 0146167218781000.
Hammond, M. D., Sibley, C. G., & Overall, N. C. (2014). The allure of sexism: Psychological entitlement fosters women’s endorsement of benevolent sexism over time. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 5(4), 422-429.
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What gives gynocentrism its social power is the power of the mob. The female mob and the army of white knights and simps at the ready to enforce the dictates of the female mob, is what holds society hostage to gynocentrism. Feminists, gynocentric female voters and their loyal male foot soldiers and white knights in politics, the legislature and policy etcetera, make sure that their gynocentric agenda rolls out and is enforced in society. Are all women and all men herd animals that subscribe to groupthink and defer to women in every context, regardless of the circumstances? No, absolutely not. Substantial numbers of both sexes do not belong in that category and those numbers are growing every day as the grotesque face of gynocentrism becomes unmistakable in the culture.
But despite this, the reality is that a substantial fraction of the male and female population do exhibit gynocentric herd mentality. Gynocentric herd mentality as the name suggests, is the tendency in women and in men to abandon individual thought, critical thinking and moral principles and passionately form a mob around gynocentric motives, conform to gynocentric groupthink and enforce gynocentrism in society. Reason is generally not involved in driving such behaviour, which is often highly irrational, immoral, primitive and tribal in nature and driven by emotion.
Gynocentric herd mentality is not a conspiracy, it is an observable phenomenon. The female ingroup bias1 of the population and the women are wonderful effect2 are features of it and have been the subject of research by social scientists. The power of the gynocentric mob was evident in the female voting patterns during the 2018 US mid-terms3, in the aftermath of the manufactured Kavanaugh controversy. We have also seen numerous high-profile examples of gynocentric herd mentality. Here are some of them: The women’s march over the last 3 years because someone with a vagina did not become US President, the rapid transformation of the metoo# movement into a man bashing crusade and witch-hunt, the manufactured scandal and backlash by the feminist mob over the Brett Kavanaugh nomination, slogans being promoted like the “future is female” and “believe the woman” and the infamous 2012 feminist protest at Dr. Warren Farrell’s lecture on the boy crisis at the University of Toronto (one of many such disruptive protests by the feminist mob that have occurred at universities across the West). Gynocentric herd mentality is even more pronounced within politics, the media, academia and corporations etcetera than the general population and it is little wonder then why society has become so lopsided.
The Social Power Of Women
Human beings are social animals and there is a strong tendency in both sexes to obtain and maintain the social approval of peers. In our prehistory, social approval was an important factor in determining the survival and reproductive prospects of individuals, their offspring and families. Social ostracism reduced these prospects. This pattern has continued throughout history and right up until the present day. Women have a large amount of social influence in prescribing the social value of individuals and female approval and disapproval plays a large role in determining what is and is not socially permitted within a community. Maintaining female approval and avoiding disapproval from women, has been a key factor in men escaping social ostracism and therefore maintaining their position in society and by extension their survival prospects and reproductive prospects. A man that attracts the wrath of the sisterhood and gets ostracised, experiences social death and social death in primitive times often meant physical death. If he is a powerful man, he may not experience social death, but instead a loss in social rank and reputation damage which is often severe and long term. In today’s world social ostracism instigated by women, can drive men to suicide. There are men that have been falsely accused of rape, condemned by the sisterhood in their communities and lost their livelihood and standing in the community and taken their own lives. This is female power- Social power.
Much has been said about the power that men hold in society, but relatively little has been said about the power that women hold in society. Whilst male power in society is primarily physical, economical and institutional in nature, the nature of female power in society is primarily social, emotional and sexual. David Shackleton at the Canadian Association For Equality, has discussed4 these differences in power between the sexes in detail. Men express power through action and women express power through persuasion. Modern society readily identifies pathological expressions of male power in society and has measures in place to hold it to account. However modern society has forgotten the pathological expression of female power in society- manipulation. Society has relatively little measures in place to hold female power accountable, or women in general accountable for anything. The lack of accountability for women and girls is that low, women can rape teenage boys in some jurisdictions and receive child support for it5.
Women are considered in our society to be close to infallible. They can do no wrong. They are pure and innocent creatures and when they behave in a way that contradicts that image, people go rushing to find excuses for their behaviour. The reverse is seen for men, when men do wrong we hold them to account. Even when men are being abused, we hold men accountable for their behaviour. Any factors that may explain and even justify men’s behaviour is dismissed. When women do wrong, we look for reasons to excuse their behaviour so we don’t have to hold them accountable. When men do no wrong, we look for reasons to find them guilty. We have hypoagency for women and hyperagency for men.
There is an important factor at play that helps explain this lopsided dynamic. The social power of women is based upon maintaining a positive image of women. The capacity to persuade and manipulate other people, requires that people respect, trust and value what women have to say. Once women lose the respect, trust and concern of society, they cease to have most of their power. Conversely the social power of women is maximised and elevated above accountability, by cultivating and maintaining a societal attitude that women are innocent, pure, infallible beings relative to men and that women are superior to men. This is the women are wonderful effect. Without cultivating the societal belief that women are superior to men and particularly morally superior, women cannot stir up the gynocentric mob to do their bidding with zero accountability.
Given this reality, feminists and gynocentric women in the media, are predictably quite sensitive to any portrayal of women that puts them in a negative light relative to men. They are quick to silence or omit any example of women behaving badly, because it threatens to destabilise the societal belief that women are superior. Masking and hiding the darker side of women behind a carefully crafted mask of feminine vulnerability, innocence and victimhood, is key to maintaining the façade that women are morally superior to men and therefore that we should defer to women in every instance. Men also prop up this façade to win the social approval of women. This façade is the foundation of modern gynocentric female social power.
In our gynocentric culture men compete with other men like trained seals, to simp and white knight and win the social approval of the “divine” female collective in order to climb the social ladder. One of the central strategies that men employ to do that in this dysfunctional culture, is to appeal to the sense in gynocentric women that women are superior. Men even write books about female superiority. Here are two examples of this linked here6 and here7. People may also want to read this review8 debunking this nonsense. Not only do men help feed the societal belief in female superiority, they also excuse women from their bad behaviour so they can remain in the good graces of women and avoid female disapproval.
It would be very interesting to put such men in a hypothetical situation in which women voiced strong disappointment and disapproval toward their bigoted beliefs in female superiority and then shamed and ostracised these men for it. The cognitive dissonance maybe sufficient to break such men free of their gynocentric stupor and stop them from throwing other men under the bus to earn female approval. Essentially both men and women reinforce this belief in female superiority in the culture and the result is that questioning and criticising what women say and do becomes a social taboo. Women rise above social accountability and even legal accountablility, because sufficient numbers of men and women are stupid enough to believe in female superiority, including academics who should know better (There are plenty of idiots with doctorates, despite what people think.). This is doubly so for the men and women in politics, the media and in our learning institutions, which have become echo chambers where ideologues can promote their bigoted beliefs and worldview with little scrutiny. Due to the existing societal belief in female superiority, when gynocentric herd mentality rears its ugly head in society, there are no checks and balances to stand in its way.
Who Is Really In Charge Of Society?
Gynocentric herd mentality wields a considerable degree of power in our institutions and in politics. We have this misguided belief in society that if more men are in positions of authority, that somehow means men are in charge and will act in men’s interests at the expense of women. In reality it is the complete opposite. I have said before that modern society more closely resembles a matriarchy by proxy, than an oppressive patriarchy and that in modern society women are privileged. Women are the power behind the throne and men just have the appearance of being charge. Of course such claims taken literally are monolithic and the reality is somewhere between the two extremes. Whilst I would not argue that society is presently an absolute matriarchy, society is certainly heading in that direction before it eventually collapses socially and economically from rampant gynocentrism.
Men in politics are to at least some degree the puppets of female voters and feminist lobby groups and organisations. Politicians of course are aware of the power of the female vote. They dance to the tune of female voters and feminists and throw men under the bus with indifference quite often. Even Donald Trump bows to the gynocentric female mob to at least some degree. This was apparent in his recent state of the union address9, where he celebrated female employment statistics and yet was silent on the multitude of issues facing men and boys in family court, education, health and from biased workplace policies and affirmative action. Whenever he discussed an issue impacting men, like the increase in manufacturing jobs, he was careful to describe it in gender neutral terms. Whilst Donald Trump and his cabinet have done some positive things for men in the United States, it has been relatively piecemeal. Throwing bread crumbs at men, is hardly going to be sufficient to overturn the entrenched gynocentrism in our institutions, businesses, legislature, education systems and governments in any substantive and meaningful way.
Just as with politics, a similar pattern is present in corporations. The feminist mob infects the HR departments and corporate service branches of businesses and then applies pressure throughout the workplace to implement biased workplace policies and affirmative action. Where feminists cannot do this from within the organisation, they mud-sling businesses from the outside from positions they hold in the media, in politics and in law. Feminists gang up in groups and target businesses and individual executives and managers, to get their way from within businesses and from outside businesses. We saw the power of the gynocentric mob with what happened to James Damore10. Don’t conform to the mob, lose your job. The media and academia also face the same pressure from the gynocentric mob from inside and outside and there have been many examples of this.
Why don’t these men that have all of this authority say no to the gynocentric mob? Aside from the fact that chivalry is still prevalent to some degree in our culture, especially among older men in authority, these men realise that retaining the social approval of women, is critical to them maintaining their positions and getting things done. If men in positions of authority are out of step with the gynocentric mob, then they run the real risk of attracting female disapproval and losing their positions and reputation. The unassailable power of female social approval, rests in the divine value that society places on what women think and have to say and that in turn rests on an image that women are superior and the moral arbiters of what is right and just. By going along with this dynamic, men in authority reinforce the validity of the positions of the gynocentric mob. When men in authority or corporations apologise for things they should not apologise for to escape the wrath of the mob, they are validating the position of the mob and strengthening its social power to bring nonconformists into line.
It is the male aversion to female disapproval, chivalry and the male competition to win female approval, that ensures that any man in authority defers to female interests above all else and often at the expense of men and the future of society. The Myth Of Male Power11 was aptly named. Our concept of male power and male oppression of women is a myth12. A myth developed by feminists and gynocentric women to help mask female power in modern society and ensure any social manipulation by women as a group flies under the radar without scrutiny. This myth ensures that when feminist women gang up on men in positions of authority and attempt to sack them or reprimand them for daring to transgress the dictates of the feminist mob, that feminist influence is overlooked.
The Gynocentric Mob And Freedom Of Speech
We can see the power of the female collective on full display in the domain of freedom of speech. The control that women have as a group with respect to the Overton window is extreme. Offend a woman or a offend a feminist and you risk being banned on social media, attacked and doxed, losing your job and even being charged and imprisoned. In Argentina a radio host has been forced to have feminists on his show to prevent imprisonment, after he was accused of misogyny. Don’t believe it? Here is the story13. That is the power of the feminist mob when they gang up on someone. Of course if you write articles in mainstream media publications titled, “Why Can’t We Hate Men?”14, or write books about men being obsolete15 and unnecessary16, or create and spread hashtags like “killallmen” or “Ibatheinmaletears”, that is to be celebrated and promoted in the mainstream media, in social media and in academia. That is how lopsided society has become.
If you dare criticise women or feminists, you risk imprisonment in some jurisdictions. But if you are an academic or in the mainstream media, you can write books about men being obsolete and men being inferior with no consequence. In fact you will be lionised by your peers as being progressive and even be invited to conferences and interviews to talk about your book. You will also be allowed to run televised debates supporting your arguments and with the outcome skewed in your favour.
Just like the mainstream media, the alternative media will bow and scrape to female approval and steer clear of triggering the wrath of the gynocentric mob. Here is a recent example of this shown in a YouTube video17 from a rising YouTube star called Isaac Butterfield. Isaac who has been highly critical of feminism, distances himself from being called a men’s rights activist in the video and then proceeds to mud-sling the men’s movement and erroneously claim that aside from family court, men pretty much have the same rights as women. I left a comment on his video as follows:
“The holier than thou mentality of these YouTubers that suddenly found men’s issues and antifeminism because it is becoming increasingly popular and now think they know what they are talking about and then turn around and lecture the group of people that have been working on these issues for decades, is getting tiresome. The fact it is a dirty word to say you are a men’s rights activist, just demonstrates why a men’s rights movement is needed. Someone can identify as a feminist in this society, despite all of the far more numerous and deeply rooted examples of bigotry from that ideology and it will be celebrated in our institutions, schools, universities, businesses, media, legislature and politics. But don’t you men dare call yourselves men’s rights activists!
Family court is just one example of a long list of issues impacting men you clearly know nothing about. Men do not have a right to genital integrity, they have virtually no reproductive rights to speak of relative to women, they can be conscripted and drafted into war, they face legally sanctioned discrimination in employment and education thanks to affirmative action and they face relatively little effective legal protection against abuse by women even when they are children. Those are just a few examples (and there are many more) where men have far less rights. Next time research the topic you are discussing.
The fact that we cannot have an honest discussion about the issues impacting men and the fact that videos like this get produced, just goes to show you the extent that men are marginalised in society. Men are that marginalised in the culture they will self-censor and belittle other men that dare to attempt to identify with men’s rights activism. The ad hominem’s are all too predictable. The “playing it safe” strategy of armchair criticism of the culture and staying within the Overton window of socially permitted discourse, is precisely what allowed misandric feminist ideology to gain traction in the first place. It is not heroic, it is not smart and it certainly does not make you morally superior to a movement you claim to not identify as.”
I generally like Isaac’s work, but the reality is that until we can have an honest discussion about men’s issues in society and stop descending into ad hominem’s and strawmanning groups that are trying to discuss and address them, we are going to go nowhere. It does not make someone edgy or trendy to go along like a sheep attacking a group of people that dare to identify with the rights of half of the population, just because it is socially acceptable to do so. If you have solid grounds that a movement in question runs contrary to what they claim to stand for and it is a systemic deviation observable with both prominent leaders in that movement and from the movement as a whole (like feminism), then fair enough. But don’t go making the equivalence fallacy that the men’s rights movement is just the same as feminism. They are not even close to being alike.
People can do their own direct research to see the difference between feminism and the men’s movement like Cassie Jaye did18, without the mud-slinging from people like Isaac Butterfield. The gynocentric herd mentality of society, the avoidance of having an honest discussion of the issues impacting men and the avoidance of the elephant in the room- gynocentrism, has to end for the sake of society. If we want to change the dysfunctional status quo of society and avoid disaster, then we must risk offending people when we tell the truth and that includes feminists and women.
Gynocentrism And The Avoidance Of Difficult Decisions
The stranglehold that the gynocentric mob has over the Overton window is considerable and it is dangerous. One of the major factors that drives the degradation of civilisation is an avoidance in making difficult decisions. When men with influence decide to place the social approval of women above reason, evidence, morality, law and their own principles and responsibilities, the systems that society relies on to function will eventually decline and then fail. We have a society in which men with authority place the approval of women above their own responsibilities and the long-term interests of society. There is a reluctance from these men to confront reality and make the decisions that need to be made to save society from its own fempocalypse19.
Bettina Arndt recently has produced a video20 calling out Jordan Peterson and other men with influence, in shying away from confronting the accountability gap between men and women. Peterson is big on responsibility, except when it comes to holding women responsible for their actions. The selective application of principles based on sex, is one indicator of gynocentrism. I certainly don’t think that Jordan is alone in that regard. There are plenty of men like Jordan with far more influence, that look the other way when it comes to the shadow side of women and put their heads in the sand and their fingers in their ears.
Women like all human beings are neither good or bad, but a combination of the two and men are no different. This is the reality of human nature. Yet in our gynocentric culture, we promote a polarised view of men and women. Women are angels and men are devils. Men are responsible and women above reproach. Men are to serve and women are to be served. Men are human doings and women are human beings. These are some of the gynocentric elements of the attitudes that this culture promotes about men and women.
It is not just influential men that have a reluctance in acknowledging the shadow side of women. Society in general is reluctant to confront this reality. For many people their worldview and their identity rests on an assumption that women are perfect and divine. There are women that cannot apologise for anything, no matter how wrong they are. There are men that cannot say no to a woman, no matter how unreasonable their demands might be. For many people it is painful to consider the possibility that women may not be so “wonderful” or “all things nice”. For many men it is only when they go through the suffering in family court, get violently assaulted by a woman, or face discrimination in the workplace or in education from feminist policy, that they take off the gynocentric rose tinted glasses and begin to question the cultural narrative they have been told about men and women.
Jordan Peterson is no different. I certainly do not wish this on Jordan or anyone for that matter, but I wonder whether Jordan and men like him would think differently if they lost their career and their freedom from a false allegation and experienced what men like Mark Pearson experienced21. Do we have to get to a point where influential men in their hundreds are thrown in jail based on a woman’s word alone and feminist mob justice reigns supreme, before these men will confront their own gynocentric bias? Or will society need to collapse and then descend into another dark age because society simply can’t cope with the female half of the population being held equally accountable for their actions? These are questions that we should be confronting, because if we don’t, then we can expect modern civilisation to collapse into a primitive tribal society resembling the third world. Of course that is if we are lucky enough to avoid a nuclear winter occurring from the process of social and economic implosion. An implosion that runaway gynocentrism and other factors will help eventually bring about, given enough time without any correction.
No modern and developed society can last when men and women have equal rights, but only one sex is accountable to the other. No such society can last when prioritising the well-being of one sex above the other without any corresponding reciprocity, is called equality. No such society can last when attempts to correct these imbalances are met with censorship, hostility and violence. No such society can last that refuses to acknowledge the shadow side of women. No such society can last where gynocentric herd mentality runs roughshod over the rule of law and freedom of speech. Such a society has a finite lifespan. The general reluctance in the population to accept these realities, will eventually lead to a crisis and then society will implode and then fracture into hundred’s of pieces. All of this is predictable and all of it is avoidable, if society is prepared to confront gynocentrism.
There are decisions that need to be made right now, to get society off the dangerous trajectory it is on. These decisions are not going to be popular and they are not going to be easy. This “playing it safe strategy” and “tread carefully” approach, is not going to save anyone in the long run. Let us take a simple example of what I am talking about. It is a fact that women in general are hypergamous and that women prefer men that earn more money than they do. It is a reality that women choose to work less than men and choose to work in lower paying professions to pursue their interests over earning money. It is also a reality that in many cases men are the only net taxpayers and that male economic activity remains the primary driving force of GDP and also of female consumer spending. Despite these realities, feminists have pushed for an education system and hiring policies in the workplace, that prioritise women and girls at the expense of men and boys.
The same women that ask for female hiring quotas, affirmative action and a feminised education system that prioritises women and girls learning needs over men and boys, fully expect men to have proper well paying stable employment and to earn more money than them, which these women intend to spend while they work less than their male partner. We can see throughout the West the impact all of these contradictions are having on the fertility rate, economic activity, government spending versus government debt, on the marriage and divorce rate and how it drives the increase in fatherless households, with all of the associated consequences of fatherlessness. We can see it in articles like, “Where have all the good men gone?”.
Clearly something will have to give for society to replace itself and to maintain social and economic stability and yet no one in politics will confront these realities. It is political suicide to confront reality for fear of offending women, thanks to gynocentric herd mentality. It is political suicide to dare to suggest we should reform the education system, remove affirmative action policies and reform divorce and family courts. Feminism sees to it that any politician that puts forward such reforms, will be framed as a misogynist in the mainstream media and many female voters will buy that narrative hook, line and sinker.
This is what happens when a society puts women’s feelings above reason and responsibility. Political decision making on important and critical reforms that are essential to keeping civilisation afloat, becomes paralysed. The end result of failing to take appropriate steps over a long enough period of time is societal collapse. Society has to choose between short term pain in the present and risking hurt feelings, or experiencing far greater suffering in the future. We can only kick the can down the road for so long. Part of the reluctance that society has in confronting gynocentrism, is the fear of making women angry. The female ingroup bias is instrumental in driving this fear. The looming wrath of the gynocentric mob and feminist cliques in the workplace, in politics, in academia, in social groups and in wider society, is a coercive force in our society that must never be mentioned, for to even speak of it is forbidden. But it is there. Every man and woman is acutely aware of what I am talking about.
Hell Hath No Fury Like A Woman Scorned
In our gynocentric society the looming threat of female anger and outrage is a powerful and guiding influence not just for men in positions of authority, but in relationships and in social settings within the community. Sayings like, “Happy wife, happy life” and “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned”, are examples of the prevailing expectation of men to not displease women and to tread carefully. The reason these sayings exist, is because women are not held accountable for their aggression and that goes especially toward men22.
This fact was explicitly illustrated recently to millions of people in my country on an Australian TV show called Married At First Sight. We had a woman berating, belittling and abusing23 a man on multiple occasions on a major national television network at dinner time in front of children. This is despite numerous government funded ads24 on television in Australia, showing men berating women in exactly the same way as on the show and it being called domestic violence. Only when the man called her a “cunt” after copping a week of abuse, was there a reaction25 and that reaction was focused on chastising the man for his comments.
Women are not held accountable for their aggression in relationships or in wider society. So when angry feminist mobs form, which often happens on university campuses when someone comes to talk that does not fit the feminist Overton window of approved ideas and speech, the aggressive behaviour of the mob is predictably out of control. How many violent and disruptive feminist protests have we seen on university campuses across the West over the last 5 years alone? Too many for me to recollect. Feminists and gynocentric women are fully aware there are little or no consequences for their aggression. That is why someone like Madonna can talk about blowing up the White House26 in front of thousands of people at the women’s march in 2017, without experiencing any serious or significant consequences for her comments and actions.
The fury of the gynocentric female mob and their white knight enforcers, is most evident when a man is accused of sexual assault by a woman. If a woman points a finger at a man, a substantial number of women will side with the woman, believe everything they say and condemn the man without a shred of evidence being required. If a woman points a finger at a man, a substantial number of men will side with the woman, believe everything they say and be at the ready to beat the shit out of the man without a shred of evidence being required. Ordinary people stampede like mindless wildebeest over men and even children, when they hear the call of gynocentrism. The metoo# movement has grown to the size it has because of gynocentric herd mentality.
Think about how much male violence has its roots in female manipulation. How many fights between men have involved a woman spreading lies about a man and getting other men to attack him for her protection and for her honour, over the centuries and in the present day? How many fights between men have started from women cheating on their partner? Think of the Lady Macbeth’s of history and the amount of men that have died from their manipulation. It would be interesting to find out the male death toll from female manipulation.
The Darker Side Of Women
Much is said about men misusing their physical power to abuse and control women, but little is said about women misusing their social power to abuse and control men. The documented female ingroup bias in our society is also barely acknowledged, if at all. Esther Vilar has written about female manipulation of men in her book, “The Manipulated Man”27. Karen Straughan has discussed the tyranny of female hypoagency28 and Alison Tieman has discussed the use of threat narratives and victimhood by women, to bully other women29 and men30. Such behaviour is not new, it has been around for centuries. But feminists have worked very hard to ensure that any discussion of female power and the pathological expressions of that power, are not discussed or addressed in the modern age. Feigning female vulnerability has been a core tactic of feminists and gynocentric women, to hide female power in plain sight and keep it cloaked. As Dr. Warren Farrell has stated, “Men’s greatest weakness is their facade of strength, and women’s greatest strength is their facade of weakness.”
Esther Vilar herself, was the subject of numerous attacks by feminists and it is little wonder given the fact that the core strategies of feminism have relied on a number of the very things she discussed in her book. Exposing female manipulation to public scrutiny, is like exposing a vampire to sunlight. Manipulation only works when it remains invisible to the manipulated and feminists do their best to keep female manipulation of men at the relational and societal level invisible and out of the field of public perception.
One of the reasons why feminism has been so effective, is because it’s influence can escape scrutiny. Feminism did not march an army down the streets, seize control of government buildings and violently overthrow the government. Feminism has successfully implemented a bloodless coup of multiple countries through the infiltration of our institutions, the subversion and social manipulation of them from within and by instigating internal and external pressure through stirring up mobs of angry women and white knights. It is through manipulation rather than physical force, that feminism has succeeded in taking over our societies.
Whilst I have addressed a number of the failing’s men have which have contributed to the gynocentric mob mentality in society, it is of course the case that a number of failings in women have contributed to it as well. In our prehistory our environment was harsh and unforgiving. Whilst men could potentially survive on their own as individuals to some degree without the tribe, this was much less the case for women. With considerably less physical strength and overall fitness, individual women especially with young offspring, would have had far less survival prospects going it alone than men. Being part of a tribe and forming female coalitions to care for each other and nurture young, has considerable advantages for women and has been a part of prehistoric, historical and modern societies. It is not really surprising then, that women have a tendency to form an ingroup bias given this reality.
However that does not mean that women are incapable of thinking as individuals or disagreeing with group consensus. It is certainly possible and indeed what is required to dissolve the gynocentric mob. Individuality in women requires women to think for themselves and regard themselves as agents in society with the capacity to influence the world around them and value themselves as individuals ahead of valuing themselves as females. The feminist control of the mainstream media and academia, has been a key factor in ensuring sufficient numbers of women are indoctrinated with the feminist worldview and succumb to gynocentric herd mentality. Janice Fiamengo has talked about this and how universities have been turned into “institutions of higher indoctrination”31.
Feminism has done everything it can to make sure women perceive themselves as helpless, disempowered and victimised and to make women feel as fearful, angry, bitter and resentful as possible toward men. Alison Tieman has discussed how feminism uses threat narratives32 to develop and cultivate this mentality in women and in the population in general. All of this encourages women to seek refuge in numbers for safety, provision and well-being and to put female group identity above individuality.
Rising Above The Gynocentric Mob
Supporting women that encourage other women to see themselves as empowered individuals ahead of being female (A shout out to the Honey Badgers!), supporting women that fight against the feminist threat narratives of male oppression, rape culture and rampant male violence etc and supporting women that promote a message that men are women’s partners and not the enemy, is how we break the back of gynocentric tribalism. Once women awaken to what feminism has done to them and join men as partners, it is game over for feminism. I am looking forward to the day when women eat feminists alive for what they have done. It is coming. Hell hath no fury indeed! Women have been used as pawns to further an agenda for power hungry women and when the penny drops for women, the shitstorm that will envelope feminists will be of epic proportions.
Encouraging men and boys to stand up for their principles and to act authentically and speak honestly over female social approval and disapproval and not to self-censor, will also be equally important. Abandoning the tradition of chivalry and teaching men to stand their ground with women and hold women accountable for how they treat them, will be essential. Men going their own way33 is all about that. Men that value themselves and are prepared to draw a line in the sand and stand up for themselves and for other men when confronted with gynocentrism, is precisely what this society so desperately needs right now.
Having an honest conversation with boys about how to identify female abuse, which is often more psychological and social in nature and teaching boys how to protect themselves from it in childhood and adulthood, will also be important, given that our society pretends female abuse and bad women do not exist. Telling boys the honest truth that not all women and girls are sugar and spice and that like all human beings there are good and bad women, is the way forward.
Removing the feminist influence in our institutions, particularly in the universities and introducing new measures and strengthening existing measures in our political system, media, academia and legislature to safeguard against gynocentric herd mentality, will be essential as well. Freedom of speech and the rule of law is under siege by the gynocentric mob. Freedom of speech, due process, the presumption of innocence and legal impartiality, are under threat and they need to be strengthened now more than ever. The more territory society loses with respect to freedom of speech and the rule of law, the closer society gets to a totalitarian state, revolt and then eventual collapse.
The most important change that will have to occur though, is our attitude toward women and girls. Women and girls are not higher divine beings that are infallible. They are human beings and like all human beings they have a dark side and are capable of and commit all of the same vices men do. There are some immoral acts men commit more frequently, but there are also immoral acts that women commit more frequently. We often fail as a society to recognise female abuse, ostracism, rumour mongering and manipulation, because they are psychological and social in nature and not physical. Female bullying and psychological abuse, can often go on for years without being noticed and can drive men and women to suicide. With have seen with a number of high-profile rape cases and the number of young men suing their colleges from false allegations, that women can and do lie about sexual assault. Even in the physical realm, women are far more violent than society believes they are. The research on domestic violence bears that out. See this link34 for more information.
Society needs to abandon this attitude women are a superior class of human being. To suggest that women are capable of the greatest evils and horrendous violence is not hyperbole. Female Hanz Fritzl’s do exist and they abuse girls as well as boys, such as this example35. There were sadistic female SS guards that did horrible and cruel things to prisoners and got sexually aroused by it, such as this example36. Quite a sick bitch that example. There are many more examples of extreme cruelty and depravity by women I can cite, but you might need a bucket to throw up in. Like with domestic violence, the expression of evil in women is more common than people think it is and that includes female pedophilia37.
Acknowledging these realities does not mean women are inferior to men or more evil than men. That is just as wrong as suggesting women are superior and more virtuous. We are talking about the dark side of human nature, not female nature or male nature. We are kidding ourselves as a society, if we think that we can ignore the darker side of human nature when it expresses itself in women. This blind spot does not just impact men and boys, it impacts women and girls as well, who often get physically and sexually abused by such women.
Feminists and the gynocentric men and women in our society, would rather let women continue to murder, assault, rape and sexually torture and abuse children and adults, by shielding women from social and legal accountability, than acknowledge that women are capable of being just as evil as men. They would rather wilfully ignore the fact women can commit acts of evil as heinous and abhorrent as any man and do so far more frequently than society believes is the case.
No one wins from ignoring evil in women. In the end civilisation is based on checks and balances. If the female half of society are not held accountable, then the worst parts of human nature will increasingly express themselves in women and provide fertile ground for evil to flourish in women. Expect the worst in women to be expressed with increasing frequency and severity in the coming years, thanks to feminism and gynocentrism. In the words of Lord Acton, “Power corrupts; Absolute power corrupts absolutely”. If society continues to turn a blind eye to the darker side of women and persists in maintaining a belief that women are divine infallible beings, then it will pay the ultimate price- its own destruction. The imbalance will ensure nothing less. All society has to do to prevent that, is abandon the childish belief women are angels and recognise women as human beings, with all the flaws of human beings.
I am almost certain somebody that reads this will say, “but not all women”…..That is right, not all women are devils. Not all men are devils either. But just as not all men are angels, not all women are angels. Let me reframe the “not all women” line. Not all women should be respected, just as not all men should be respected, not all women should be trusted, just as not all men should be trusted, not all women are saints and not all men are serial rapists and murderers just waiting outside a woman’s apartment to assault them.
Both sexes are capable of terrible evil and amazing good. The belief in female superiority is the core factor behind the gynocentric herd mentality in society. If enough people were prepared to question and criticise women when they behaved improperly and not just blindly believe and respect all women simply because they are women, then half the gynocentric bullshit that is slowly destroying society from within would cease. The belief in female superiority and the associated attitudes about men and women have got to go, if society is to have a future.
We can either descend into a new dark age and let the gynocentric mob take over, or we can fight for the foundations of civilised society and travel to the stars above us. All that is required is for people to think for themselves instead of subscribing to groupthink, act as authentic individuals, abandon the belief in female superiority, put their own principles and reasoning above social approval and particularly female approval and above all, stand their ground against gynocentrism.
The shaming of men and boys in our culture has been going on for a long, long time. So long in fact that there are now men and women in the population that never grew up in a time when masculinity was valued and men were viewed in a positive light. Being male in this culture is a sin. Being a white male doubly so. In my previous article, “Gynocentrism and Misandry”1, I elaborated further on how gynocentrism is associated with a belief in female superiority and that this belief system is based on the attitudes that society cultivates around masculinity and femininity.
Men and boys are devils and women and girls are angels. Men are violent, predatory, primitive and destructive. Women are peaceful, empathetic, civilised and life giving. These attitudes we have about men and women and the associations we make with masculinity and femininity, distort our perception of reality and our behaviour toward the sexes. At the macro level this impacts our culture, how we raise the next generation, how we run society and shape policy and laws and it also importantly impacts the future direction of society.
Our society sees the worst in men and the best in women and rarely the reverse. Only in circumstances where men are conforming to gynocentric norms of prioritising female well-being over male well-being, are they given a reprieve. But even that is temporary and is often labelled benevolent sexism2when it is convenient for feminist women to do so, to advance their agenda. Of course if men then attempt to treat women as true equals and abandon chivalry, then they often become the target of aggrieved entitled women3. Men can’t win, which is the entire point of the feminist agenda and why men need to recognise feminism for the hate movement4 that it is. This movement wishes to subjugate you and marginalise you because you are male. Kowtowing to feminists will just accelerate the process, it will not save you.
The gynocentric attitudes we hold about men and women in society, reinforce bigoted gynocentric double standards in our culture on a regular basis. These attitudes become not just a justification but also an incentive, for enshrining gynocentrism in our laws, policies, institutions and social norms. Challenging gynocentrism in our culture, can sometimes lead to people revealing their own bigoted attitudes about men and women. You may have heard the cry, “Because I am a woman” for example, if you have ever questioned these double standards.
These gynocentric attitudes about men and women go back centuries. We can see them reflected in old nursery rhymes from centuries ago that tell us, “boys are made of snips, snails and puppy dog tails and girls are made of sugar and spice and all things nice”5. The demonisation of masculinity and the deification of femininity in the culture, has been an ongoing and gradual process spanning centuries. Dr. Paul Nathanson and Katherine Young have examined the deification of women and the demonisation of men over history and in the modern era, in their book Sanctifying Misandry: Goddess Ideology and the Fall of Man6. Like a snowball going down a hill, this process has been gathering increasing momentum over time over the centuries and particularly the last five decades under feminism.
According to feminist ideology to be born male is to sin. In the eyes of feminists, men are collectively to blame for the actions of all men. Not just men that live in the present, but all men that have lived thoroughout history. We as men are guilty for the actions of men that lived hundreds and sometimes thousands of years ago. This is feminist tribalism and the perspective of the female mob and self-loathing men behind their hateful ideology. Men are also to my knowledge the only group that can be collectively blamed for the actions of one individual in Western society (here is just one example 7of this). In any other case society regards it as bigotry. That speaks volumes about the contempt society has for men.
Feminism have rewritten history and framed men as the oppressors of women. The feminist capture of the humanities departments at the universities has been instrumental in their campaign to vilify men and propagate this false and hateful narrative. The narrative feminists have spun is a powerful one. History is not something we can easily examine as we cannot directly observe it. The general public has to rely heavily on academics to learn about their history and when feminists control the humanities departments of universities, the truth is especially difficult to uncover.
The narrative of women being victimised at the hands of men, also plays on our base emotional drives and impulses to protect what we perceive as the more vulnerable sex (thanks in part to female neoteny and the parental brain). It becomes very easy for feminists to use this narrative to play on people’s emotions and bypass critical examination of their agenda by society. The feminist account of history is difficult to challenge unless you have a thorough knowledge of the primary sources of the historical record, since so much history syllabus has been corrupted by feminist ideology. Even with all the facts at their disposal, people still need to contend with appealing to reason when the feminist narrative puts people in an emotional frame of mind.
History informs so much of what we do in everyday society. Our political and legal systems and culture rely to a significant degree on history to inform decision making. We look at what worked and what did not and use that as a guide to shape policy and law. We debate issues and ideas based on our account of our own history. Cultural tradition is rooted in our understanding of our own shared history. Indeed an effective way to socially engineer society, is to corrupt it’s understanding of it’s own history. Feminism has virtual control of academic scholarship in the humanities and has been actively corrupting our understanding of history for decades, with little to no substantive resistance. We are told that men have oppressed women for thousands of years. Past society is described as a violent, tyrannical patriarchy where men were privileged and women were oppressed and treated as chattel. That is the feminist account of history, which they have subtly and gradually been embedding into scholarship within academia over the decades.
This does have profound implications for society, because like I said, our account of our own history influences how we run civilisation. History also shapes our attitudes about ourselves and about others. We can see this influence play out in diplomatic relations between countries, in the perpetual conflict in the Middle East and between governments, indigenous people and the general population. History does not just influence our decision making, it shapes our attitudes towards groups of people and also about ourselves. Even today Germany is still trying to overcome the legacy of the Nazi party and the death camps. So when feminism invaded the humanities and began rewriting history decades ago, it was quite predictable that this would eventually have profound implications on our attitudes toward men and women and it has.
We now have an education system in which boys and girls are taught as early as primary school, the feminist narrative of male patriarchal oppression and male violence. Here are two accounts of what boys have exposed to, linked here8and here9. Please read and listen to what they are telling us is going on and how it has impacted them and the boys that were around them. This process of indoctrination continues from primary school, through to high school and postgraduate study, all the way up to academic scholarship itself. The mainstream media, politics, our legal system and government policy, are also informed on this worldview of “thousands of years” of patriarchal tyranny. Feminists are not content with just telling people what to do, they want to burrow inside your brain like a parasite and they want access to young children to brainwash.
The feminist strategy of subverting our education system and embedding their ideology into scholarship and the syllabus, is essentially a systematic form of brainwashing of the general population. Feminism wants to shape people’s perception, because once they have control of the perception of society, they can then implement their agenda with the support of the population. If feminists can train society to perceive men as the violent oppressors of women for thousands of years, then it gives feminism the support to push forward an agenda in government, business and elsewhere, that prioritises female well-being above male well-being, with no reciprocity or regard for fairness. The feminist narrative of thousands of years of tyrannical patriarchy and male privilege and oppression of women, is the foundational justification and incentive used to pass laws, policy and initiatives. that treat women and girls as a higher class of human being and men as an underclass.
This is precisely the same pattern you see with any ideology that advocates bigotry. Bigotry requires a belief in ones own moral superiority over the group they perceive has wronged them. This sense of moral superiority and self-righteousness, requires bigots to find a justification and support for their own attitudes about the group they hate and why their actions are righteous. Millions of people have been exterminated based on this way of thinking. As Karen Straughan described in two videos (linked here10 and here11, some of her finest work in my opinion) debunking the feminist worldview and narrative of an oppressive patriarchy, you kind of have to hate men to twist facts and omit so much of history to paint men as the oppressors of women.
When we examine the gynocentric attitudes about men and women in society today, we are seeing the product of not just centuries of gynocentrism, but also the feminist revision of history. I discussed in “Gynocentrism and Misandry”, that the misandry we are witnessing in this society has gotten to this level because of the indifference of the general population. This is certainly correct, as the indifference of the population to male well-being ensures there is no resistance to feminist bigotry and misandry. However the driving force behind the escalation of misandry in our culture over the last fifty years, has been the feminist revision of history and the feminist cultivation of hatred toward men in the general population. Feminism has been creating a fire in the hearts and minds of the population, that men need to get what they deserve. The feminist version of equality, seeks retribution for supposed wrongs based on the skewed feminist account of history.
In the minds of feminists, men must pay for thousands of years of what they frame as male oppression. They use this rationalisation to stir hatred and bitterness in the population toward men and garner support from the public in pushing forward an agenda of female supremacy in the name of justice. It is not uncommon for instance to see simpletons in the general population argue the feminist initiatives to implement female hiring quotas are fair, because men have been in charge for hundreds of years and have supposedly “ruined” everything. Feminists never heard of two wrongs not making something right. It is an eye for an eye for feminists. Of course it is not really an eye for eye, because the feminist fiction that history is thousands of years of male oppression is a disgusting lie.
The slogan “the future is female”12, is often justified by some people on the basis that men have had their turn and now it is time for women to be “privileged” and have their time in the sun. The reliance on the historical narrative of male privilege and male oppression of women, is key to this simplistic childlike thinking. With it feminists can not just gain acceptance from the population in advocating for biased policies, programs, initiatives and laws that place women and girls above men and boys, they can actually engender support and encouragement from a sizable amount of gullible and stupid people within the population. Remember half the population has an IQ below 100. All you need to do to seize control of society, is to persuade the stupid, gullible, impressionable and ignorant to form a mob, accept your narrative and silence any dissent. Every totalitarian ideology based on hate, victimhood and tribalism, has employed this strategy and feminism is no exception.
These far left feminist mobs we now see every second week or so on TV did not come from thin air. The hatred of men and particularly white men, has been cultivated through a feminist revision of history that has been spread by feminist control of academia, the education system and the mainstream media. When you teach successive generations through schools and then universities, that men are the historical oppressors and women have been the oppressed, it impacts their attitudes toward men and women. Women walk around with a chip on their shoulder and men walk around with their shoulders slumped. It fosters resentment, anger and bitterness toward men and it fosters self-loathing and shame in men. As discussed, the feminist control of academia ensures that it becomes virtually impossible for any member of the general public that questions this narrative or even an academic, to get an accurate and unbiased account of their own history.
As time goes on and more and more generations have been indoctrinated with the feminist account of history and our society has gradually lost it’s memory of what it once was, soon all that will be recorded is the feminist account of history. There is no discussion by feminists on the millions of men that died in war to protect their female partners and family, or the millions of men that worked themselves to an early grave in the mines, in the bellies of ships and farmed the land from sunrise to sunset with their bare hands and backs etc so their families and women could eat. There is no consideration given to the reality that the majority of men were just as poor as the majority of women over history. There is no acknowledgement by feminists of the fact that many men did not own any land at all or any substantive amount of land and did not have the right to vote for the vast majority of human history. Many men worked at the mercy of the male and female aristocracy, with little influence over their own lives.
There is no accounting by feminists of the fact that it was only some men and women in society that had any substantive wealth, land or power. There is omission by feminists of the powerful and wealthy female upper classes, who enjoyed a life of relative privilege and had a quality of life far beyond the vast majority of men in the population and were free of any labour or drudgery. Feminists are silent on the reality that feminism itself mainly originated from privileged upper class white women. There is no thought given by feminists of the numerous social and legal responsibilities men had toward women, or the privileges and exemptions from certain societal obligations that women were exclusively given. Women were not conscripted in the millions and sent off to be cannon fodder, to cite just one example.
The feminist account of history is one of omission and distortion. The feminist subversion of history and the humanities, has been the feminist equivalent of book burning and has been going on unchallenged for decades. This had led to a cultivation of hatred toward men in modern society. It cannot be understated the impact that has on fueling gynocentrism. When feminists cultivate hatred toward men and they portray women as victims of male oppression throughout history and cultivate sympathy toward women, they provide a justification and an incentive for gynocentrism to flourish. The recent focus on toxic masculinity and feminist ideology in the Gillette Ad13 and the APA guidelines on men and boys14, comes from this very narrative of historical patriarchal oppression. We have seen an explosion in gynocentrism over the last fifty years, as a direct result of this widespread and unchallenged lie that men historically oppressed women.
As Dr. Warren Farrell has pointed out, the primary focus of civilisation up until very recently was one of survival. Men have not been the oppressors. The harsh and unforgiving environment has been the oppressive force on society. The environmental pressures faced by society, required both sexes to make sacrifices and for men that often meant their lives. Ironically it was these very sacrifices that allowed society to advance to a point where there was enough prosperity for feminism to rewrite the very history that enabled it to come into existence!
Men sacrificed and have died in the millions so feminists could write about how violent and oppressive they were. It is the ultimate insult and a disgrace to shame men for the sacrifices they have made for women and society throughout history. Men have not been more privileged, they have been held more responsible. They were given authority to sacrifice for others and men did. Dr. Warren Farrell has written in the Myth Of Male Power15, about the underlying reality that any civilisation that has survived has done so by training it’s men to be disposable for society and to sacrifice themselves for others and particularly for women and children. The Titanic is just one example of how old this tradition of male sacrifice is. How oppressive of men to save the lives of women and children at the expense of their own!
Whether it was protecting their society and women and children from a hostile invading force, or working themselves to death or injuring themselves doing hazardous and physically arduous labour, the history of men was one of sacrifice. I would invite people who think otherwise to watch this video by Tom Golden, that shows just one example16 of this sacrifice. I would invite everyone to watch that video and listen to just how fucking hard men had to sacrifice for society, before they start talking about men historically being the “privileged” sex. If it were up to me, I would invite feminists to work and re-enact what men did on that canal that Tom discussed for just one day. We could quash that fucking narrative of male patriarchal oppression of women and male privilege in one day!
As Tom Golden has discussed17, this cultivation of hatred toward men is based upon the same mechanism behind the cultivation of hatred toward black people in the early 20th century. If we are serious about addressing the pervasive misandry on display in our culture, then in addition to addressing the indifference we have toward male well-being and our bigoted attitudes about men and women, we will also need to reclaim our history back from feminists. Clearly if the nature of men was to oppress women, feminism would never have come into existence at all and it certainly would not have achieved the level of power it enjoys today.
Even in the modern era feminists will argue that men are privileged and oppressing women. They will point to the tiny fraction of men that are CEO’s relative to female CEO’s and then infer this represents the population as a whole and is caused by patriarchal oppression of women and no other factor. Feminists completely ignore the majority of the homeless which are male, the male unemployed and the men working in hazardous and low paying professions. They will discuss the gender pay gap repeatedly and then ignore the numerous variables that explain it (like more women choosing to work part-time, more men working night shift and in remote locations, or more women choosing to work in childcare over engineering) and rush right to the conclusion that the gender pay gap is all due to discrimination against women.
Stefan Molyneux has done a brilliant job examining the feminist claim that men today are privileged in this video18. This claim of male privilege in present day society, has always rested on the feminist narrative of history to garner validity and robustness. Present day accounts of male privilege require feminists to employ sophistry to make it appear that male privilege and patriarchal oppression have always been with us. That they are as real, solid and enduring as the air we breathe. It is much more difficult for feminists to persuade the public their bullshit ideological concepts are real, if they cannot demonstrate that they have existed for thousands of years.
It is time to call bullshit on the feminist revision of history. It is a one-sided and distorted account of history, that polarises people and cultivates hatred toward men. To destroy a society, destroy it’s culture by corrupting it’s own record of it’s own history. That is a central component of the feminist strategy to transform society into a female supremacist matriarchy. Please comment on those points below and share your thoughts on what is wrong with the feminist narrative on history and give examples if you like. The more the merrier!
It’s no secret that women feel entitled to special treatments from men based on the European culture tradition of chivalry: i.e., allowing women to go through the door first; showering the “fairer sex” with compliments about being beautiful, caring or pure; paying for dinner and other life luxuries; and offering them costly care and protection around the clock. In the modern context chivalry boils down to the male posture of deference to women’s needs and wants, which understandably fosters a positive self-concept in women and a sense that they must be “worth it” as we are reminded by the ubiquitous advertising jingle.
The expectation of male chivalry, or benevolent sexism as some prefer to call it, is nothing new and there are countless studies confirming that women generally expect such treatment from men.1 So we will take that expectation as a given. What hasn’t been studied sufficiently in women is the reaction men’s failure to provide expected level of chivalric supplies, and this is where we run into the useful concept of ‘aggrieved entitlement.’
The phrase aggrieved entitlement was popularized by feminist Michael Kimmel who refers to it as a gendered emotion displayed by disenfranchised males, entailing “a fusion of that humiliating loss of manhood and the moral obligation and entitlement to get it back.”2 By ‘manhood’ Kimmel is referring to rights that males have supposedly enjoyed over women that are subsequently denied them by a changing world. He further clarifies that men “tend to feel their sense of aggrieved entitlement because of the past; they want to restore what they once had. Their entitlement is not aspirational; its nostalgic.”3
In a recent paper Dennis Gouws suggests that the aggrieved entitlement descriptor can be equally applied to the behavior of women. Reviewing Kimmel’s concept he concludes:
Because Kimmel’s sympathies lie with gender feminism, he is uninterested in how this concept might apply to women’s behavior. Women might express aggrieved entitlement when they experience what they perceive to be a humiliating loss of the gynocentric privilege to which gynocentric chivalry, gender feminism, and hegemonic gynarchy have entitled them. Self-righteous, angry expressions of personal offense and even violent acts might result from their perceived moral obligation to regain their sense of gynocentric privilege. A cursory internet search of gender-feminist responses to men’s-issues speakers on campus and to the establishing men’s groups or other male-positive spaces on campus will provide examples of this aggrieved entitlement.4
Gouws provides a useful example of aggrieved entitlement by women who dominate university campus culture. Men attempting to establish male support groups on female-dominated campuses, or who attempt to invite speakers sympathetic to men’s health issues, have frequently been met with fury for apparently removing the chivalric focus from women and their issues. The resultant female rage has triggered violent protests, intimidation, vindictive and false accusations, or boycotting of male initiatives through financial and other means.
Looking at the sexual-relations contract that has been operating for eons we can see that a certain degree of narcissistic pride was encouraged in order to sweeten gender roles for men and women – “He’s an awesome strong man, a man’s man and a great provider” or “She’s a magnificent mother, those children never go without love or food”. Those adhering to traditional gender roles received compliments for their service, along with some compensatory payoffs by the opposite sex.
When an individual fails to adhere to their traditional gender role the bubble of narcissistic pride bursts, giving rise to aggrieved entitlement in members of the opposite sex. In the language of psychology we would say the expectation of narcissistic supply has been cut off, and narcissistic injury and rage steps forward to address the grievance. Most readers would know that some of the worst examples of aggrieved entitlement by women are displayed by feminists, about whose behavior Ernest B. Bax concluded in the year 1909; “Weakness, to whose claim chivalry may per se be granted, forfeits its claim when it presumes upon that claim and becomes aggressive. Aggressive weakness deserves no quarter.”5
Bax further elaborates on aggressive weakness (i.e., aggrieved entitlement) in the following passages:
I may point out in conclusion that the existing state of public opinion on the subject registers the fact that sex-conscious women have exploited the muscular weakness of their sex and have succeeded in forging a weapon of tyranny called “chivalry” which enables them to ride rough-shod over every principle of justice and fair play. Men are cowed by it, and fail to distinguish between simple weakness per se which should command every consideration, and that of aggressive weakness which trades upon “chivalry” and deserves no quarter.6
“Even taking the matter on the conventional ground of weakness and granting, for the sake of argument, the relative muscular weakness of the female as ground for her being allowed the immunity claimed by Modern Feminists of the sentimental school, the distinction is altogether lost sight of between weakness as such and aggressive weakness. Now I submit there is a very considerable difference between what is due to weakness that is harmless and unprovocative, and weakness that is aggressive, still more when this aggressive weakness presumes on itself as weakness, and on the consideration extended to it, in order to become tyrannical and oppressive. Weakness as such assuredly deserves all consideration, but aggressive weakness deserves none save to be crushed beneath the iron heel of strength. Woman at the present day has been encouraged by a Feminist public opinion to become meanly aggressive under the protection of her weakness. She has been encouraged to forge her gift of weakness into a weapon of tyranny against man, unwitting that in so doing she has deprived her weakness of all just claim to consideration or even to toleration.”7
Bax penned the above observations over a century ago, although the behavior he described had been around for much longer than that. The phrase ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned’ is usually attributed to the English playwright and poet William Congreve. He wrote these lines in his play The Mourning Bride, 1697:
Heav’n has no Rage, like Love to Hatred turn’d,
Nor Hell a Fury, like a Woman scorn’d.
These lines describe a temporary loss of male chivalry by women and the aggrieved entitlement that ensues – a reaction that Michael Kimmel pretentiously emphasizes as a mostly male pathology. A more honest appraisal of the changing gender roles and the accompanying sense of aggrieved entitlement would admit that women’s roles and choices have expanded exponentially, which includes the throwing off of any expected responsibilities toward men and boys, while conversely the male role of providing benevolent sexism/chivalry for women has changed little. On the basis of such disparity men appear to be coping remarkably well in comparison to women who retain many of their traditional privileges and expectations, but who display extreme rage at micro-disenfranchisements and momentary lapses in chivalric supply.
Benevolent sexism toward women remains the norm, despite women’s traditional obligations toward men being wiped out
In summary the grief-reaction over loss of traditional roles is not a predominately male issue. Women have yet to experience the loss of gendered entitlements on anywhere near the same scale as men, however they are equally proficient at raging over micro-losses of chivalry and male deference. The theory of aggrieved entitlement thus applies to no gender in particular – so lets use it to describe the ever-present rage displayed by women in both private and public settings.
References:
[1] Hammond, M. D., Sibley, C. G., & Overall, N. C. The allure of sexism: Psychological entitlement fosters women’s endorsement of benevolent sexism over time. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 5(4), 422-429. (2014)
[2] Kalish, R., & Kimmel, M. Suicide by mass murder: Masculinity, aggrieved entitlement, and rampage school shootings. Health Sociology Review, 9(4), 451–464. (2010)
[3] Kimmel, Michael. Angry white men: American masculinity at the end of an era. Hachette UK, (2017).
[4] Dennis Gouws, Not So Romantic For Men: Using Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe to Explore Evolving Notions of Chivalry, in Voicing the Silences of Social and Cognitive Justice, 167–178. (2018)
[5] Ernest B. Bax., Women’s Privileges and “Rights”, Social Democrat, Vol.13 no.9, September (1909).
[6] Ernest B. Bax., Feminism and Female Suffrage in New Age, (1910)
[7] Ernest B. Bax., Chapter 5: The “Chivalry” Fake, in The Fraud of Feminism (1913)
Below is an excerpt from p.3 of the introduction to The Second Wave: A Reader In Feminist Theory, edited by Linda Nicholson. Note the promotion of differences between men and women, referred to as ‘difference feminism’ or ‘gynocentric feminism.’
__________________
In the late 1960s and early 1970s two contradictory beliefs existed as part of the general culture: that the differences between women and men were deep and rooted in nature and, secondly, that women and men were basically the same. Second wave feminists initially drew heavily on this latter belief to press for changes in the status quo. While many, particularly “liberal” feminists, continued in this direction, those feminists who saw their politics as more radical began to focus on the differences between women and men. This focus can in part be explained by the political limitations radical and socialist feminists saw as associated with a “women and men are the same” perspective.
Such a politics seemed to consist in pushing society towards accepting women in the same positions as men in an otherwise unaltered social world. But as one of the popular slogans of the period claimed: “Women who strive to be equal to men lack ambition.” For radical and socialist feminists, a politics that merely strove toward placing women where men had previously been also lacked ambition. If one were to build a politics which radically altered the status quo, one needed to focus on the deep ways society differentiated the life activities and psyches of women and men. What began to emerge can be described as a “difference” feminism; because it often elaborated the meaning of differences between women and men in terms of the unique situation and characteristics of women, it has also been labelled a “gynocentric” feminism.
This new focus on the differences between women and men was elaborated, however, in a variety of ways. In my selections I have identified three distinct orientations within this general turn. One way of moving away from a “women and men are fundamentally the same” perspective was to stress the depths of women’s oppression. A focus on oppression led toward a view of women as victims, and to the move toward separatism found in large sections of the radical feminist community during the 1970s. The essay “The Woman Identified Woman” and the chapter from MacKinnon reflect this first elaboration of difference.
A second type of gynocentrism tended toward describing the differences between women and men in more neutral terms, emphasizing both their positive and negative consequences on women’s lives. The Chodorow and Gilligan essays reflect this second type of orientation. A third type, represented here in the essays by Hartsock and Collins, focused on the ways in which the distinctive positions of women—for Hartsock, women in general and for Collins, African American women in particular—provide a unique and positive standpoint for understanding society and for developing a liberatory vision.
“Difference” or “gynocentric” feminism produced an enormous amount of highly creative work. The writings of such theorists as MacKinnon, Chodorow, and Gilligan led to “aha” experiences for large numbers of people. Suddenly, patterns that many had sensed “through a glass darkly” were laid out in clear and convincing texts.
In my previous article “Perversions of gynocentrism”1, I discussed the void of respect for men and boys. We live in a culture that does not respect the male half of the human race. To call this truth out is to attract the ire of feminists and be labelled a whinger and a misogynist that is just angry his supposed “privilege” has been taken away. The contempt that our gynocentric society has for men and boys is a forbidden topic to discuss.
This hostile reaction to discussing men’s issues and their well-being and labelling any men that discusses them a whinger, is not just seen from feminists. It is also expressed from a substantial number of men and women in society. It is an ugly reality of human nature that people do not like to confront their own bigotry and when they are confronted, it generally elicits a hostile response. The reality is that the misandry that feminism vomits out into society, is just a symptom of a much more deeply rooted problem in our culture.
Men and boys cannot read a newspaper, watch television, go online, listen to the radio, go to work, or to college or school, or even socialise with their peers, without being regularly bombarded with hateful and bigoted messages that there is something inherently toxic about them or wrong with them because they happen to be male. There is a feminist campaign of psychological warfare directed at men and boys. Tom Golden has compared it2 to the communist brainwashing of political dissidents in China and made a compelling argument feminists are using the same techniques.
In my article “Diagnosing Gynocentrism”3, I discussed how gynocentrism is associated with a belief in female superiority. This belief holds that women and girls are naturally and inherently superior to men and boys based on being female. This belief emerges from two attitudes. There is an underlying attitude that masculinity is inherently flawed and that masculinity is toxic, violent, predatory, destructive and primitive. There is also a corresponding attitude that femininity is flawless, pure, peaceful, empathetic, life-giving and civilised. Gynocentric slogans like “women civilise men”4 and feminist terms like “toxic masculinity”5, are just two expressions of this same belief system. Female superiority is a belief system that leads to the dehumanisation of men and boys and the deification of women and girls.
Within one week of me publishing “Perversions of Gynocentrism”, the American Psychological Association released their guidelines on dealing with men and boys, which pathologises traditional masculinity. Ex-Navy Seal Jocko Willink, has written a brilliant article debunking this nonsense6 and I highly recommend people take time to read it. Numerous psychologists such as Dr. Gad Saad7, Dr. Shawn Smith8 and Dr. David Ley9 in Psychology Today, have strongly criticised these guidelines and the demonisation of masculinity and the feminist ideological bias within them. A few days later, Gillette releases their new ad10 on how men need to reform themselves and evolve past their primitive, violent and predatory ways (because apparently all men in general are now represented by the actions of a handful of predatory, backwards and violent men). These examples of demonising men and masculinity are nothing new. This has been going on for decades.
Where I live, we have government funded man-bashing ads on TV on a regular basis11, holding men in general collectively responsible for domestic violence. If one woman is murdered by a man, the media are quick to collectively hold all men12 as sharing responsibility for their death. There is of course no discussion of female violence toward men. This is despite the abundance of research available13 that shows it is hardly a tiny fraction of domestic violence, but actually a substantial portion of it.
There is of course no collective blame directed at women in society for the actions of individual women that commit child abuse and physically attack their male partners. There should not be either, because all women and all men are not responsible for the actions of individual men and individual women. Of course this is understood when we look at female violence toward men and children, but not in the case of male violence toward women and children. That is just one gynocentric double standard that helps keep reinforcing the bigoted attitudes we have about men and women, which in turn drives the belief in female superiority.
Man bashing ads are like grains of sand on the beach. Books14and research papers15 have even been written on how pervasive the negative portrayal of men and masculinity is in this culture. The institutionalisation of misandry is also widespread in our society. Misandry is present in our political system, our universities, our family courts, our legal system, our schools, our universities, our corporations, our mainstream media and our government departments. It is in our policy, in our laws, in our news, in our entertainment, in school and university syllabus and academic scholarship and it is increasingly invading our personal spaces and social interactions.
None of this is new. What is new is the level of outrage the Gillette ad has generated. 2019 will mark the ten year anniversary of A Voice For Men. Ten years ago the Gillette ad would barely have created a ripple. There would have been some criticism, but hardly to the level we are presently seeing. This change in societal attitudes is a new phenomenon and an emerging trend. People have finally had enough. People are starting to notice the impact of what disrespecting the male half of the human race has in their own lives and they are recognising the true face of feminism. We have a long, long way to go, before we unlearn centuries of gynocentric programming. We are however starting to see society question the cultural narrative that something is inherently flawed about masculinity and also feminist ideology.
I did leave a comment on the Gillette ad. I responded as follows:
“Is this ad the best a man can get? Imagine if this ad generalised all black people or all women by the actions of a few individuals. Would such bigotry even get past production and be released? So why is it suddenly ok to generalise the male half of the human race by the actions of a few men? This is wrong. It is not “some” men doing the right thing, it is actually most men. Inspiring men to do better, requires respecting men to begin with. Seeing the worst in men and using shame and guilt to inspire them to do better, just creates the understandable level of hostility we see toward this ad. Men are not toxic, this message and messages like it are toxic. Inspiring men to do better, requires portraying a positive image of masculinity to your audience and not deriding them. Such simple logic.”
Predictably feminists attempted to gaslight me. That is their predictable (all so predictable) response when they get challenged on their own double standards. There is nothing wrong with what they are doing, it must be me and the million or so other people like me that expressed a problem with the ad. Not in one instance in the replies under my comment, did feminists answer my question about whether this ad would have even got past production if it had of portrayed black people or women in this way.
Gillette would have us believe “some” men but not most men, are doing the right thing by others. It is implied through omission that the majority of men need to reform themselves. The ad clearly exploits a perceptual bias called anchoring16, to set the perceptual frame in the viewers minds right from the beginning, that men in general are to be found guilty for the actions and behaviour of a handful of predatory and violent men. Then it proceeds to lecture men from a morally self-righteous position, on what men should be doing to redeem themselves. I will ask the question again, would feminists approve of this ad if an ad like this was made about women? I think we all know the answer to that and their silence to that simple question is deafening.
Feminists were predictably quite quick to obfuscate an examination of their own double standards and bigotry, by accusing people of having a problem with men acting like decent human beings, or even going as far as insinuating that I was somehow one of those toxic men portrayed in the ad. This is the predictable game feminist ideologues play- They set the bait to elicit anger from men, there is an angry reaction from men and then they frame themselves as victims of male aggression. It is all in your head, there is something wrong with you etcetera, etcetera. Gaslighting is a preferred tactic by feminists. But the central question that I asked still remains unanswered. Would these same feminist ideologues be perfectly fine with a comparable video being made about women? Indeed people have noted that double standard and have produced such videos17.
Men and women do not have a problem with the message of men acting like decent human beings. They do have a problem with an ad framing men in general as violent, primitive, predators and that only “some” men are doing the right thing. They do have a problem with an ad that takes such a pompous and morally self-righteous position to judge and shame it’s male customer base and then dare to lecture them on how they should behave. The ad like most feminist inspired ads, is dripping with condescension toward men18.
Paul Elam did an excellent response to the ad linked here19. I also left a comment on that video as follows:
“When I wrote about there been a void of respect for men, I was not saying that as a minor footnote. We live in a society that is so gynocentric it pathologises the very type of men and masculine traits it depends on to exist. They say fish rots from the head and it certainly does. This ad is nothing new, just more of the same. The misandry in ads has been going on for decades.
Feminist ideology is the religion of the corporate kleptocracy we live in. The steady progression of this toxic ideology through our public institutions and businesses, is the product of decades of general apathy from the public toward the well-being of men and boys. Society gave feminism the green light to demonise and dehumanise men and boys and marginalise them in the name of equality decades ago. Business executives and politicians go along with it because society mostly does not care and has shown zero concern for decades. Is anyone going to protest outside their HQ? Is anyone going to make a formal complaint or take legal action over this ad? Is this really going to lead to any serious and long-term boycott of their products? Is there going to be any real tangible consequences for this business and any well organised movement to pushback against this misandry?
There were many ads, articles, books and shows like this before and most people said nothing. Only now is the rotten stench of feminism starting to bother people.
You reap what you sow. This will continue to worsen until people confront and correct their own gynocentric programming. Exactly how bad the stench of feminism needs to get before that occurs, depends on how much people are willing to suffer for their own gynocentric stupidity. The moral laziness of society toward gynocentrism is really to blame, not a business that just reflects the fashionable bigotry of the day. Look in the mirror people.”
One year ago there was another video that attracted similar levels of controversy. Does anyone care to guess what it was? It was the Jordan Peterson interview with Kathy Newman on Channel 420. So you were saying? So you were saying? So you were saying? Remember? Strawman, gaslight, strawman, gaslight. Precisely the same feminist tactics of painting men as villains and portraying themselves as victims, was on full display a year ago from that interview and in its aftermath. Just like now, there were millions of people that heavily criticised that interview. The cycle of misandry repeats itself over and over again each year and it will continue to escalate.
So my question to people is what are you going to do now? This is not a new problem. I can pretty much guarantee with certainty that the bigotry and contempt that our feminist controlled society has towards men, is going to keep continuing and keep escalating. You can expect more ads like this. What we are presently facing is not something that just grew overnight. The demonisation and the marginalisation of men and masculinity, has been going on for decades. It was the apathy and the indifference of the general population to what feminists were doing then, that allowed the pervasive misandry in our society to be normalised by feminists and grow to the point we are observing today.
I want people to really think about how deeply entrenched the hatred of men would have to be in our society, for the American Psychological Association to come up with their feminist inspired guidelines toward treating men and boys. I went through multiple examples in “Perversions of Gynocentrism”, on describing the world we now live in and how they illustrate a void of respect we have for men and boys. It is not hyperbolic for me to say that if I replaced men with Jews in some of the hateful content coming from our feminist media, academics and politicians, it would not look at all out of place in Nazi Germany. Could you imagine the outrage if the Washington Post article, “Why Can’t We Hate Men?”21 was written about Jews? Antisemitism is reprehensible and so is misandry. The fact you can write such hateful drivel about men in a major mainstream media publication, goes to show you just how depraved our society has become.
To get to this level of feminist depravity and hatred towards men in society, the general population had to be apathetic and indifferent enough to the well-being of men to permit it. That is the disgusting truth that no one wants to acknowledge. Even a substantial number of antifeminists will stop short of examining the reasons why feminists have been so successful in implementing their agenda, with next to no resistance from the population. All of these mothers and fathers with sons did nothing for generations, while feminism gradually infected and then spread through our institutions, companies, politics, media, legal system and public and private organisations. Despite the massive outcry over this one ad that goes for less than 2 minutes, the concern and outrage from the public over a multitude of far more serious examples of systemic and institutional misandry in society, is relatively little.
Men and boys are far behind girls at every level of education from kindergarten to postgraduate education. They have been struggling academically for decades in a feminist controlled education system that prioritises women and girls learning needs and avoids and silences any attempt to address this imbalance. Young men have seen their rights to due process eliminated on college campuses and their lives ruined from false allegations, thanks to biased feminist university policies and kangaroo tribunals. Husbands and fathers face severe bias in the family court and divorce process and many of them lose everything- wife, kids, house and sometimes their lives. Countless fathers are killing themselves on a regular basis from being alienated from their children. Men are now facing a social climate thanks to metoo# and changes to the legal system, where a woman can virtually point the finger at a man and based on an unproven accusation from more than 20 years ago and with no trial, the man can have his life destroyed. The list goes on and on.
Many of these problems have been around for decades and they are systemic in nature and have impacted millions of men and boys. The silence from our society to these issues has been deafening, because mostly no one cares. Like I said, the Gillette ad that went for less than 2 minutes, got more attention in one week than any of those men’s issues I just mentioned have gotten from society in twenty years! If these things were happening to women, we would be up in arms and there would be a revolution. The indifference to the suffering and marginalisation of men and boys, is a readily observable feature of society. This is the gender empathy gap22.
It is a stark and surreal claim to talk about men being privileged in a society that bends over backwards on every occasion to cater to feminist demands to prioritise female well-being (even to the point of spending money on stopping “manspreading” on public transport), while at the same time shaming and ostracising men and boys and showing such indifference to their suffering. So whilst I am glad to see the reaction to the Gillette ad, that reaction is just a blip on the radar screen. In contrast the reaction from society in general toward the systemic misandry within it, has been one of silence, indifference and in some cases encouragement. If people want to see real change, then that will have to change.
Feminism has been able to spread through the public and private sectors of our society with ease, because our leaders have correctly perceived that they will receive greater consequences from feminists for not going ahead with the feminist agenda, than from the general public if they do. Politicians will gladly parrot feminist talking points on domestic violence for example, because they know the attacks they will get from feminists in the media and elsewhere if they do not, will be orders of magnitude more detrimental to their political careers, than the consequences they will receive from the general public by doing so. I noticed Stardusk has raised this very same point in relation to his response to the Gillette ad23 and also emphasised the importance of saying “no” to these feminist ideologues. It is the same situation in any big organisation that feminists infest.
Our society has been slowly rotting away from the inside year after year and decade after decade, from the slow and gradual feminist subversion of our institutions, academia, media, legal system, political system and corporations etc. The feminist capture of the universities has been essential to feminisms spread throughout society, ensuring that our future politicians, policy and law makers, business professionals, mental health professionals and educators, are thoroughly indoctrinated in feminist ideology and go on to work at senior levels where they can spread feminist ideology within the private and public organisations they work for.
In many ways modern society today resembles a termite infested house. The feminist infestation has gone by unimpeded for decades and now suddenly the damage is starting to appear on the surface. What people need to realise is the Gillette ad is just the tip of the iceberg of this problem. We now have a situation where the public and private sectors of our society, blatantly express the female supremacist values of feminist ideology and the general population is disgusted by what it sees. But what the general population is disgusted by, is really just a reflection of its own gynocentric double standards. All that was required for this to occur, was for people to remain indifferent to male-being for long enough to let feminism implement their agenda and entrench themselves in our institutions and corporations etc.
In “Perversions Of Gynocentrism” and “The Normalisation Of Gynocentrism”24, I explained at a social and cultural level how the spread of feminism and gynocentrism has been achieved. Gynocentrism is at the heart of the pervasive misandry we are observing today and feminism is merely a political manifestation of gynocentrism. We are not going to overcome feminism by simply limiting our focus to criticising feminist ideology. We have to ask serious questions about why society has been so easily overtaken by feminism. We have to confront our own apathy toward male well-being. We have to confront our pedestalisation and deification of women and girls. We have to confront our own gynocentric programming and how that programming taps into basic sexual and emotional drives and short-circuits them. If we are not prepared to confront our own gynocentrism, then feminism will continue to degrade our society until it inevitably collapses from a fempocalypse25.
Only if society cares enough about male well-being to react in a manner that leads to serious consequences for our politicians, businesses and academics etc to lead them to change their ways and resist feminism, will we see any change. Until then it will remain business as usual and feminism will keep on escalating the misandry in our society. Feminism has had several decades to infest every branch of society and has a great deal of political and financial momentum behind it. Feminism will not be defeated by a single protest or a single boycott or a single march or a single legal battle. It is going to take a sustained effort on multiple fronts to remove the decades of feminist rot in our society. It is going to take a society prepared to rise above its own gynocentrism and its one-sided concern for only female well-being, to generate a strong enough response to defeat feminism. Half measures will not be enough. If people truly have had enough of misandry like the Gillette ad, then we have to go the whole way and question our own double standards that prioritise female well-being and ignore male-being.
The gynocentric seeds of our own destruction bore the fruit of feminism. Feminism is just an extension and a reflection of our own bigotry. We have an underlying belief in female superiority embedded in our culture which we do not want to look at, because we do not like the reflection that stares back at us. We have bigoted attitudes toward men and toward women engrained in our culture. The women are wonderful effect26 and the female in-group bias27, are real measurable phenomena in our society and are the subject of scientific enquiry. We need to unlearn those attitudes. Men are not collectively responsible for the actions of mass murderers and serial rapists. Women and girls are not all sugar and spice and men and boys are not all primitive violent Neanderthals. The notion of women and children first and the complete disregard for male well-being, is indefensible in a modern developed society where women enjoy the same rights as men.
The underlying belief in female superiority that has gradually been embedded in our gynocentric culture and the attitudes it is based upon, need to be confronted and eradicated. Masculinity is not toxic, these gynocentric elements of our culture are toxic.
Psychology clings to a universal model – that men are incorrigibly flawed and require a dismantling of their identities, habits, and preferences before being reconstructed according to a feminist model of masculinity. All modern therapies have this basic premise in common.
For example, one of the more popular models of men and masculinity to emerge in the last 20 years, promoted as A New Psychology of Men, is described in the following terms by one of its founders:
The new psychology of men has emerged over the past 15 years within the larger fields of men’s studies and gender studies. Informed by the academic breakthroughs of feminist scholarship, the new psychology of men examines masculinity not as a normative referent, but rather as a problematic construct. In so doing, it provides a framework for a psychological approach to men and masculinity that questions traditional norms of the male role and views some male problems as unfortunate byproducts of the male gender role socialization process.1
Since it’s inception this “new” psychology of men has restated traditional gender stereotypes about men; that they are flawed, violent, emotional primitives in need of reconstruction. This supposedly “new” model has also been developed into a training course teaching therapists how to effectively work with men.
The course, designed by former American Psychological Association President Ronald Levant, is based on two principles held almost universally by therapists working with men; a). that patriarchy theory represents the real world, and b). that males are stunted in their emotional processing abilities. Let’s look at these two pillars of therapy.
Patriarchy theory
As with most psychologists and therapists today, Levant is informed by feminist-inspired patriarchy theory which posits that all men have power over all women and that such power is enforced by men’s violence. The theoretical vision, trumpets Levant, provides a “new” way of looking at men:
What scholars in the area of men’s psychology have attempted is nothing less than a reconstruction of masculinity. It starts from the recognition that there is a problem, and locates the roots of that problem in the male gender role… The new psychology of men strives to address the feminist critique of patriarchy while remaining empathetic to men.2
As many readers will know there is nothing “new” in this characterization of men, which we can summarize with the phrase, ‘Women have problems, and men are the problem.’ As Levant stresses, the primary approach to therapy with men is first to problematize them; “It starts from the recognition that there is a problem.”
In this model men are viewed as being problems before they even meet the therapist, who ignores the possibility that men’s problems may lie outside themselves in a world of grief they did nothing to deserve.
In other words, whatever the presenting complaints of the client they are immediately dismissed by the practitioner in order to coerce the client into an ideological mold of manhood. The practitioner, depending on their degree of indoctrination, may actually believe this will address the client’s issues but even a cursory examination of the “masculinity as identified problem” approach reveals numerous, deep flaws. In fact, this approach proves to be abusive in any reasonable interpretation of the word.
As I explain below there are other approaches to working with men that don’t presume they are flawed and need fixing. That approach begins with asking men what they experience in life, and what they might want to achieve in therapy, and actually listening to their answers. Therapists may be interested to hear men speak of a range of experiences and goals wholly unrelated to patriarchal domination of women and children.
Men as emotionally dumb
Referring to men as dumb has the double-meaning of both lacking in intelligence and being mute. This forms the basis of Levant’s theory that men possess little emotional awareness about themselves or others, that they are lacking in emotional intelligence, and that even were they to discover some emotional awareness they would not know how to express it in words, such is the depth of male lacuna. He refers to this problem in men as alexithymia – a Greek term meaning no words for emotions, insisting that most North American males suffer from this syndrome.
Levant states that “it is so very widespread among men that I have called it normative male alexithymia,”3 a syndrome that by definition only men and boys can be labelled with. There even exists a Normative Male Alexithymia Scale used to assess the depth of men’s need for therapeutic correction. Levant states,
One of the most far-reaching consequences of male gender-role socialization is the high incidence among men of… the inability to identify and describe one’s feelings in words… men are often genuinely unaware of their emotions. Lacking this emotional awareness, when asked to identify their feelings, they tend to rely on their cognition to try to logically deduce how they should feel. They cannot do what is automatic for most women -simply sense inwardly, feel the feeling, and let the verbal description come to mind.4
This claim, that men are “unaware of their emotions,” an assumption so typical of psychology’s view of men, has been a cornerstone of the therapeutic world for the last 40 years. And it is demonstrably wrong.
According to the vast majority of studies on emotional processing, men and boys are able to identify emotional arousal in themselves and others equally to women, emotions like jealousy, love, anger, sadness, anxiety, etc. But men and boys choose to regulate that emotional arousal not by verbalizing it so much (women’s preferred method) but by taking intelligent action. A woman for example might talk with her melancholic friend about what is worrying her in order to cheer her up; the man may invite the same melancholic friend to the movies; both responses -talking, or acting- serve to intelligently modulate emotions.
What Levant has failed to discriminate are 1. recognizing emotions, and 2. verbalizing them. He, and so many psychologists who came before and after him, assume that by not verbalizing emotion males must also have failed to recognize emotions. Countless studies however show this to be a false conclusion.5 Men, like women, can sense the full range of emotions – but they may choose to respond to that knowledge in a different manner to women.
Breaking with the past – starting afresh
Repackaging patriarchy theory is a move we no longer wish to make – at least not if we wish to genuinely help men. Increasing numbers of men are tired of waiting for the psychotherapeutic industry to drag its collective ass out of gynocentrism-land to develop a genuine new model for tackling male psychology.
To attain that model there has to occur a break with patriarchy theory and assumptions that men and boys are emotional dummies. As in a court of law we begin the new therapy with an assumption that men are not only innocent until proven guilty, but that ‘men are good’ to use Tom Golden’s iconic phrase.
Nor will work with men be savvy until it admits the realities of cultural misandry, gynocentrism and their undeniably crushing effects on modern males. The daily assaults on men and boys from advertizing, mental health services, media, family courts, pharmaceutical companies, education from grade school to grad school, anti-male bigots and ideologically driven governance must be included in the picture.
These are problems which are deleterious to all aspects of men’s lives, including mental health. The mental health industry is a huge part of that problem, not a part of the solution.
A sane alternative to all this must disabuse men, women and society of the following myths:
men belong to a patriarchy and take that model as their life script;
men are emotionally inept;
men are default potential sexual predators;
men are violent and uncaring;
men are not necessary as parents;
men are unable to commit;
men are emotionally unavailable;
men are not as human or deserving as women.
.
The things we do want to include in a new mental health model are:
enhanced understanding of misandry, gynocentrism and their consequences;
recognizing and honoring men’s emotional acumen;
recognizing and combating misandry and gynocentrism in the mental health industry;
professional understanding of the ways men differ from women in how they cope with life;
a prohibition on the practice of expecting men to emulate women’s emotional processes;
an allowance of men’s legitimate anger without infecting them with ideological shame;
the steadfast belief that men’s issues, pain and needs are as important as anyone else’s.
.
These points alone are sufficient to create a revolution in the way we work with men. As a truly new approach to men’s welfare and psychological health, An Ear For Men has been launched and the coming Men’s Mental Health Network will be promoting these principles and providing a range of specialized services from professionals who have been thoroughly vetted in their knowledge of men’s issues, and in their compassion for the same.
References:
[1] Ronald F. Levant, ‘The new psychology of men,’ in Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, Vol 27(3), Jun 1996, 259-265
[2] Ronald F. Levant, Men and Emotions: A psychoeducational approach – course material, Newbridge Publications, p.4, 1997
[3] Ronald F. Levant, Men and Emotions: A psychoeducational approach – course material, Newbridge Publications, p.9, 1997
[4] Ronald F. Levant, William S Pollack, A New Psychology of Men, pp.238-239, 1995
[5] For example, this Finnish study shows that while women were more proficient at verbalizing feelings, men and women were equally proficient at identifying feelings: Salminen, J. K. ‘Prevalence of alexithymia and its association with sociodemographic variables in the general population of Finland,’ Journal of psychosomatic research, vol. 46, no1, pp. 75-82, 1999
Gynocentric feminism defines the oppression of women very differently from humanist feminism. Women’s oppression consists not of being prevented from participating in full humanity, but of the denial and devaluation of specifically feminine virtues and activities by an overly instrumentalized and authoritarian masculinist culture. Unlike humanist feminism, gynocentric feminism does not focus its analysis on the impediments to women’s self-development and the exclusion of women from the spheres of power, prestige, and creativity. Instead, gynocentric feminism focuses its critique on the values expressed in the dominant social spheres themselves.
The male-dominated activities with the greatest prestige in our society — politics, science, technology, warfare, business — threaten the survival of the planet and the human race. That our society affords these activities the highest value only indicates the deep perversity of patriarchal culture. Masculine values exalt death, violence, competition, selfishness, a repression of the body, sexuality, and affectivity.
Feminism finds in women’s bodies and traditionally feminine activity the source of positive values. Women’s reproductive processes keep us linked with nature and the promotion of life to a greater degree than men’s. Female eroticism is more fluid, diffuse, and loving than violence-prone male sexuality. Our feminine socialization and traditional roles as mothers give us the capacity to nurture and a sense of social cooperation that may be the only salvation of the planet.
Gynocentric feminism thus defines the oppression of women quite differently from the way humanistic feminism defines it. Femininity is not the problem, not the source of women’s oppression, but indeed within traditional femininity lie the values that we should promote for a better society. Women’s oppression consists of the devaluation and repression of women’s nature and female activity by the patriarchal culture.
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Gynocentric feminism has received a number of expressions in the United States women’s movement in recent years. Artists and poets have been among the leaders in developing images of celebration of this more positive understanding of women’s history and contemporary self-understanding. Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party, for example, laboriously and beautifully recovers whole aspects of women’s history and locates them within images of female genitalia and objects that rely on traditionally female arts.
Within the sphere of political activism, gynocentric feminism perhaps is best represented in the feminist antimilitarist and ecology movements of the past five years. In the Women’s Pentagon Action or the action at the Seneca Army Depot, for example, a major aspect of the political protest has been the use of symbols and actions that invoke traditional labor, such as weaving, spinning, birthing, mothering. Feminist antimilitarist and ecological analysis has argued that the dangers to the planet that have been produced by the nuclear arms race and industrial technology are essentially tied to masculinist values. The burgeoning movement of feminist spirituality entails a similar analysis and promotes values associated with traditional femininity.
A number of prominent recent theories of contemporary feminism express a gynocentric feminism. I see Susan Griffin’s Woman and Nature as one of the first written statements of gynocentric feminism in the second wave. It shows that one of the first steps of gynocentrism is to deny the nature/culture dichotomy held by humanists such as Beauvoir and to affirmatively assert the connection of women and nature. Daly’s Gyn/Ecology I see as a transition work. In it Daly asserts an analysis of the victimization of women by femininity that outdoes Beauvoir, but she also proposes a new gynocentric language.
Carol Gilligan’s critique of male theories of moral development has had a strong influence on the formation of gynocentric analysis. She questions dominant assumptions about moral valuation and affirms forms of moral reasoning associated with traditional femininity. Following Chodorow, she argues that gender socialization creates in women a relational communal orientation toward others, while it creates in men a more oppositional and competitive mode of relating to others. These gender differences produce two different forms of moral rationality: a masculine ethic of rights and justice, and a feminine ethic of responsibility and care.
Traditional moral theory has ignored and repressed the particularistic ethic of care as being pre-moral. Women’s moral oppression consists of being measured against male standards, according to Gilligan, in the silencing of women’s different voice. The dominance of those male centered values of abstract reasoning, instrumentality, and individualism, moreover, produce a cold, uncaring, competitive world. Both the liberation of women and the restructuring of social relations require tempering these values with the communally oriented values derived from women’s ethic of care. While Gilligan herself would reject the label of gynocentric feminist, her work has exerted an enormous influence on feminists in fields as diverse as mathematics and philosophy, providing the foundation for a revaluation of attributes associated with femininity.
Mary O’Brien articulates a gynocentric critique of traditional political theory starting from the bio-logical fact that the reproductive process gives women a living continuity with their offspring that it does not give men. Women thus have a temporal consciousness that is continuous, whereas male temporal consciousness is discontinuous. Arising from the alienation from the child they experience in the reproductive process, masculine thought emphasizes dualism and separation. Men establish a public realm in which they give spiritual birth to a second nature, transcending the private realm of mere physicality and reproduction to which they confine women.
Patriarchy develops an ideology of the male potency principle, which installs the father as ruler of the family and men as rulers of society, and substitutes an intellectual notion of creativity for the female principle of life generation. The contemporary women’s movement has the potential to overturn such a conception of politics that is separated from life continuity because out of female reproductive consciousness can come a politics based on women’s experience of life processes and species continuity.
Nancy Hartsock’s theory of the feminist stand-point from which she analyzes patriarchal culture is a more sweeping version of gynocentric feminism. She argues that the sexual division of labor provides men and women with differing experiences that structure different standpoints upon nature and social relations. Based on Chodorow’s theory of the development of gender personalities, Hartsock argues that men experience the relation of self and other as one of hostility and struggle.
The sexual division of labor also removes men from the needs of the body, from the vulnerability and basic demands of children and the aged, and provides men with an instrumentally calculative reltion to nature. This division of labor, she argues, produces a way of thinking about the world that Hartsock calls abstract masculinity, which organizes experience and social relations into binary oppositions in which one term carries greater value than the other.
This standpoint of abstract masculinity has determined the primary structure of Western social relations and culture. This male dominated culture’s values are both partial and perverse. It embodies sexuality where desire for fusion with the other takes the form of domination of the other. Masculine consciousness denies and fears the body and associates birth with death. The only sense of community generated by abstract masculinity, moreover, is the community of warriors in preparation for combat.
From women’s experience, Hartsock claims, we can both criticize masculinity values and conceptualization and develop a better vision of social relations. The gender personalities women develop in relation to their mothers give them a propensity to feel more connected with others than men do. The experiences of menstruation, coitus, pregnancy, and lactation, which challenge body boundaries, give women a greater experience of continuity with nature.
Women’s labor in caring for men and children and producing basic values in the home, finally, gives them a greater rootedness in nature than men’s work gives them, a more basic understanding of life processes. These attributes of women’s experience can ground, Hartsock argues, a form of conceptualization that does not depend on dichotomous thinking and that values connections among persons more than their separation, as does abstract masculinity.
While Sara Ruddick is careful to claim that any recovery and revaluation of traditionally feminine attributes must be infused with a feminist politics, her notion of maternal thinking provides another example of a gynocentric feminist analysis. She argues that the specific daily practices of mothering generate specific modes of thinking motivated by the interests in preservation, growth, and the acceptability of the child to the society. Maternal practice is not restricted to mothers, but exists wherever such nurturing and preservation interests prevail. She suggests that maternal thinking provides antimilitarist values that feminists can use in promoting a politics of peace.
Writing within a very different intellectual current from American feminists, using rather different assumptions and style, several women in France in recent years have developed distinctive versions of gynocentric feminism. I shall mention only Luce Irigaray and Julia Kristeva. Like a number of other contemporary French thinkers, Irigaray describes phallocentric culture as preoccupied by a meta-physics of identity dominated by visual metaphors. Male thinking begins by positing the One, the same, the essence, that generates binary oppositions in which the second term is defined by the first as what it is not, thus reducing it to its identity.
Phallogocentric discourse defines the opposition male/female in just this way—woman is only not a man, a lack, a deficiency. Preoccupied with the straight, the true, the proper, men establish relations of property and exchange in which accounts are balanced. Women in the phallocentric system have been silenced and separated, exchanged as goods among men. Irigaray pro-poses that women must find and speak the specificity of female desire, which has completely different values from those of phallic thinking.
Women’s eroticism is neither one nor two but plural, as women’s bodies themselves experience arousal and pleasure in a multiplicity of places that cannot all be identified. Touch, not sight, predominates, the autoeroticism of vaginal lips touching clitoris, of intimate bodies touching. A genuinely feminine language moves and twists, starts over again from different perspectives, does not go straight to the point. Such a language can displace the sterility and oppressiveness of phallogocentric categorization.
Kristeva also focuses on language and the repression of specifically female experience. Language has two moments: the symbolic, the capacity of language to represent and define, to be literal; and the semiotic, those elements of language that slip and play in ambiguities and nuance. Certain linguistic practices, such as poetry, make most explicit use of the semiotic, but for the most part the playful, the musical in language is repressed in Western culture and the symbolic, rational, legalistic discourse rules.
For Kristeva this repression concerns the repression of the body and the installation of order, hierarchy, and authority. Repression of the body and the semiotic entails repression of the pre-oedipal experience of the maternal body before the subject emerges with a self-identical ego, as well as denial by the culture of the specificity and difference that the female body exhibits. Challenge to the dominant oppressions, to capitalism, racism, sexism, must come not only from specific demands within the political arena, but also from changing the speaking subject.
Kristeva finds in the repressed feminine the potential for such change, where feminine means at least two things: first, women’s specific experience as female bodies, the daughters of mothers, and often mothers themselves, an experience of a decentered subject; second, the aspects of language and behavior Western culture has devalued and repressed: the poetic, rhythmic, musical, nurturant, and soothing, but also contradictory and shifting ways of being, that fickleness that women have been accused of. This revolution of the feminine Kristeva finds in anumber of male avant-garde writers. The women’s movement, however, also carries the possibility of displacing the rigidity of a subject that loves authority, provided that women do not fall into that humanist feminism by which they simply demand to get in on the masculinist power game.
To summarize, humanist feminism defines femininity as the source of women’s oppression and calls upon male-dominated institutions to allow women the opportunity to participate fully in public world-making activities of industry, politics, art, and science. In contrast, gynocentric feminism questions the values of these traditional public activities that have been dominated by men. Women’s oppression consists not of being prevented from participating in full humanity, but of the denial and devaluation of specifically feminine virtues and activities by an overly instrumentalized and authoritarian masculinist culture. Femininity is not the problem for gynocentric feminism, and indeed is the source of a conception of society and the subject that can not only liberate women, but also all persons.
Gynocentrism perverts everything it comes into contact with and the first casualty is the standard of behaviour between men and women. Sydney Watson recently did a great video1 on men helping women and the ridiculous feminist concept of benevolent sexism. In this article I will be discussing her video and exploring the connection between chivalry and the success of feminism. I will also be discussing benevolent sexism further and what is missing for men in our gynocentric society, as part of my series on exploring the nature of gynocentrism. Chivalry has been around in Western culture for far longer than feminism and is one of the major contributing factors to the rise of feminism in society and its successful and rapid spread through our institutions, corporations, politics, academia, media, law and policy etc.
The chivalrous deference that men in power have shown toward women and their eagerness to prioritise female well-being, often at the expense of everything else, has been absolutely critical to the rise, spread and success of feminism in Western culture. The willingness of men and boys as a group to not just tolerate, but actively support feminist measures that prioritise female well-being over their own well-being, without any reciprocity, is a product of the gynocentric tradition of chivalry that has been ingrained in our culture for centuries and passed down from generation to generation. Without men in power and men as a group deferring to the demands of feminists and women as a group and feminists deliberately exploiting the gynocentric tradition of chivalry, feminism would have never been able to gain traction.
Chivalry2 is what gynocentric traditionalists (not all traditionalists are gynocentric) do not want men and boys to unlearn. What they fail to understand, or perhaps do not want to understand, is that it is chivalry that allowed feminism to emerge, grow and quickly spread throughout society like a virus and gain a stranglehold in our institutions etc. Feminism was a power grab by a substantial fraction of the female population, to enshrine gynocentric double standards into law, policy, media, academia, businesses and our institutions and normalise those double standards in the culture.
Chivalry was what gave feminism the opportunity to successfully execute a bloodless coup of our societies. Chivalry was the accelerant that facilitated the rapid spread of the feminist firestorm through every branch of society, without any resistance from the men supposedly in power. We could eliminate feminism tomorrow, but as long as chivalry remains in our culture, it will simply re-emerge a few decades later under a different name. I would actually go further and argue that as long as chivalry remains in our culture, feminism will never be defeated.
As long as men defer to women and men in power and in men general are prepared to prioritise female well-being over male well-being, without any reciprocity for men and boys, feminism will keep succeeding on every front with their agenda until society collapses. Calls by gynocentric traditionalists for men to be more chivalrous, are nothing less than calls for more gasoline to be thrown into a burning building. Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result, is called insanity. It is gynocentric insanity to be promoting chivalry in the modern feminist society we live in.
Feminists are of course all too happy to keep exploiting chivalry to their advantage and like gynocentric traditionalists, they also encourage and promote chivalry when it suits them. HeForShe and White Ribbon for example, are nothing less than an attempt by feminists to blatantly exploit chivalry for their own benefit. We could go through example, after example, after example, of this same strategy being employed by feminists- Set a victim narrative or damsel in distress narrative where women and girls are in need of male assistance, instill guilt and shame in men and then engender a sense of duty in men to save the day, be the white knight and redeem themselves (of course even when men do what feminists say, they are never forgiven for their sin of being male), then ostracise any man or woman that questions your narrative and label them a misogynist. Wash, rinse, repeat. It is the same feminist strategy every time and on every occasion our male politicians fall for it and so does most of the rest of society. Exploiting chivalry from men and boys, has always been a core element of feminism’s success. It is the fuel that keeps the feminist fire burning.
The prime distinction between gynocentric traditionalists and feminists, is they exploit chivalry to fit an agenda that is different. Both exploit chivalry, just for different ends. Both are different sides of the same gynocentric coin and are in conflict over the male resources they want to exploit. It is a gynocentric tug of war between two gynocentric factions of society that want to exploit men for different goals. Neither group has an ounce of concern for male well-being, except to the extent it serves female interests.
So why is it exactly that feminism has been able to rely so heavily on chivalry to gain traction in society? Chivalry in its modern form is one-sided. There is no reciprocal set of responsibilities and duties expected from women and girls, in relation to how they treat men and boys. It is all one-way traffic, which makes chivalry the perfect fuel to drive a one-sided and bigoted agenda of female supremacy under the banner of feminism. Whilst chivalry has diminished somewhat in the culture over the last several decades, it still remains socially enforced to a substantial degree in modern society. Indeed a number of women in the media3 have been doing their very best to promote chivalry.
This is about women wanting to have their cake and eat it too. They want the rights and opportunities of men, but not the responsibilities, obligations and sacrifices expected of men and they want to keep the traditional privileges women have enjoyed for centuries. They want to be treated as equals when it suits them, but they want special treatment like they are aristocracy when equality does not suit them. This is female entitlement mentality. The same women arguing men should act like gentlemen from the 19th century, bristle at the very mention of women acting like ladies from the 19th century. That right there is the problem- Lack of reciprocity. The one-sided gynocentric face of chivalry in the modern era.
To Defeat Feminism Chivalry Has Got To Go
Chivalry in its modern form is gynocentric bigotry. It is a one-sided code of socially enforced behaviour for men and boys to treat women and girls as a group with a special level of care and respect, simply because they are a female, with no equivalent efforts expected to be made by women and girls toward men and boys in return. Men and boys are expected to act like gentlemen and women and girls can act in any manner they please toward men and boys. Like other forms of bigotry, chivalry has no place in a society that claims it is against discrimination and for equality.
If we are ever going to defeat feminism, then chivalry will need to go. Men in power have to start saying “no” to the demands of feminists and putting their principles ahead of the approval of feminists, female voters and female media commentators. Men in general are going to have to learn to set boundaries with women and stand their ground and not cater to the demand’s women make that conflict with their values. Men in general need to learn to say “no”4 to unreasonable demands by women and feminists. This might sound simple and yet for many men they cannot bring themselves to say that simple word when it really matters. What would we call a relationship when you cannot say no to a group or individual? Slavery and dictatorships come to mind.
Society is not a patriarchy, that is feminist projection (so much of feminist ideology in general is projection). Modern Western society more accurately resembles a matriarchy by proxy, with feminists ruling from behind the throne and the men in power acting as feminist servants. These men in positions of authority, regularly and eagerly implement the feminist female supremacist agenda on feminists behalf, without a whimper of resistance and throw men and boys under the bus for approval from feminists and female voters.
All that is required for this to stop, is for men (and particularly men in positions of authority) to stop kowtowing to women, find their balls and say the word “no” to the next unreasonable demand made by a screeching feminist harpy. Men place far too much value in concerning themselves about winning and maintaining the social approval of women and far too little value in striving to be the best version of their authentic themselves and winning the approval of others on authentic grounds that are true to themselves. That is the distinction between a man with integrity and a man on a leash that follows the social whims of women and feminists. That needs to change and if we want to begin that change, then we need to stop teaching young boys a one-sided chivalrous code of behaviour. We need to stop teaching boys that deferring to women and prioritising female well-being at the expense of male well-being, without any reciprocity, makes them a “man”.
Of course men are not the only group that need to change if we want an end to chivalry and to defeat feminism. There will also have to be a big shift in the attitude of women as a group toward men. We live in a culture that fosters female entitlement mentality5, as Miranda Devine termed it. Women to a significant degree are raised from childhood to expect chivalry and a one-sided set of obligations men have toward women. There is no reciprocal set of obligations given to girls on how to treat men and boys. Boys and girls learn from a young age that boys do not hit girls, but rarely if ever are girls told not to hit boys. This is despite boys and girls reporting similar levels of intimate partner violence when they date6. That is just one example of many that I can give of the lopsided gynocentric messages children get as they develop into adults.
Paul Elam has recently done a video7 examining the link between how we raise girls in modern society and how that then fuels the culture of female entitlement that leads to feminism. Children are not stupid. If girls are taught and see the adults around them expecting men to treat women specially simply because they are women and the reverse is not expected for women on how they treat men, then of course it will foster a sense of female entitlement and female superiority they will carry through to adulthood.
Both men and women are involved in perpetuating the cycle of gynocentrism from one generation to the next and teaching girls this sense of entitlement. The result of this cycle is an epidemic of female narcissism. Dr. Tara Palmatier spoke about this social trend of female narcissism8 in her talk at the first international men’s conference in Detroit in 2014. Peter Wright has recently discussed9 how gynocentrism in women is a form of situational narcissism in women’s relations with men and compares the characteristics of gynocentrism in women with narcissistic personality disorder.
Female entitlement mentality is indeed a pathology and it is narcissistic, but in this feminist culture we glorify it as a sign of female empowerment. That will also need to change if we want to see an end to chivalry and by extension, an end to feminism. Female entitlement mentality is not something to be proud of or something we should be normalising in the culture as a sign of female empowerment. All it does in the long term is foster resentment and bitterness between the sexes and drives them further apart, which in turn hastens the social breakdown and collapse of society. Neither sex benefits from female entitlement mentality in the long term.
Sex Differences And Limitations
In Sydney’s video she discusses the reality that males and females are different and each sex has their own unique set of limitations and vulnerabilities and that there is nothing necessarily wrong about men helping women in that context. I would absolutely agree. The sexes have co-evolved over millions of years of natural and sexual selection, to develop unique and complementary sets of traits to perpetuate the lineage. This has been a feature of not just human evolution, but also the evolution of our ancestors. It is certainly correct to state that men helping women based on real limitations, is not immoral and it is not gynocentrism. Where it becomes gynocentric bigotry, is when men help women based solely or partly on the fact they are female and not because of some real limitation and where no reciprocal efforts are expected or made by women in return.
There is a distinction between being kind, compassionate, respectful and generous toward your fellow human being and applying such principles selectively based on the sex of the individual. This is why I developed a diagnostic definition10 of gynocentrism to delineate between being authentically generous and compassionate and gynocentric bigotry. If you are a man that sees a woman that clearly needs help with her shopping bags and you want to assist them, so be it. Good on you! However, if you are the sort of man that sees a man clearly needing help moving a fridge onto a truck and won’t help them simply because he is not female, don’t ask me to respect that. Imagine for a moment if this double standard was reversed or based on racial grounds. What would we call it? Make no mistake chivalry in the modern era is bigotry, gynocentric bigotry to be exact.
Feigning Female Vulnerability
Dr. Warren Farrell in the Myth of Male Power11 wrote that, “Men’s greatest weakness is their facade of strength, and women’s greatest strength is their facade of weakness.” In our gynocentric culture it is often the case that female vulnerability and limitations are exaggerated and in some instances just made up, as a means to garner special treatment for women and girls. As mentioned, the feminist victim narrative is critical to their standard strategy of getting their agenda implemented. In sharp contrast, it is often the case in our gynocentric culture that male vulnerability and limitations are dismissed. So whilst I agree with Sydney that real limitations between men and women exist and that men helping women where these limitations is exist is not automatically a bad thing, we need to look at those limitations in an honest way and without the gynocentric glasses on. We should seriously look at male vulnerabilities and limitations as well and not just glaze over them.
We also need to take an honest look at how we react to those limitations of women and men and make sure we react in fair and balanced manner. For example, if we are going to lower physical entry standards for the military, then we should be basing that decision on solid evidence that it will make our military more lethal by allowing higher quality recruits to be retained. Furthermore, we should be applying those standards across every recruit and not just female recruits. If the reasoning for lowering entry standards is to increase the number of women serving in the military to appease feminists and win female votes at the expense of national security and such standards will be selectively applied to female recruits only, then we are not reacting honestly or fairly to the physical limitations of women.
Benevolent Sexism Doublethink
I discussed benevolent sexism in my earlier article on diagnosing gynocentrism and how we need to look at the intent that is driving the behaviour before we make claims men helping women is sexist against women or conversely that it is gynocentric. Indeed that was precisely the same point Sydney raised in her video discussing benevolent sexism. Using feminist logic, it can be successfully argued that numerous feminist initiatives where men are helping women, like White Ribbon, HeForShe and others, actually hurt women and are examples of benevolent sexism. It could even be argued that feminism itself is benevolent sexism. Such claims are clearly false obviously.
To claim men helping women is sexism against women, implies that the intent driving that behaviour is malicious and that such acts are done with the intent to harm women rather than help them. If that was indeed the case, then we would expect the attitude that such men express toward women would be negative and that their stated reasons behind their actions would betray a similar negative view of women and a clear intent to do them harm. Yet we do not see this, we see the opposite. Instead we often see such men talking about women (undeservingly I might add), as if they are some superior or special class of human being. We often see such men arguing women are kinder, gentler, morally superior or should rule the world etc. The goals or reasoning behind the actions of such men is often explicitly and emphatically stated to be to benefit women and not to harm them. Only someone that has a deep-seated mistrust and hatred of men, would assign negative motives in such a context and in light of these facts.
Benevolent sexism contradicts itself and is gynocentric doublethink. If it is sexism, then by definition it is not benevolent. Such terms exist because feminism cannot tolerate men being viewed in a positive light by society, if men are to accept their own exploitation. If men are doing things to benefit women, then that clearly runs against the feminist narrative of male oppression of women and against the feminist propaganda to instill perpetual guilt in men and boys. It is hard to demonise men and boys in the eyes of society, when they are trying to help the people they are accused by feminists of oppressing!
What Is Missing For Men
Sydney points out in her video that men are in a no-win scenario, where any action they take will lead to shaming and ostracism by feminists. I addressed this in my article on normalising gynocentrism12, where I discussed learned helplessness in men. Feminism seeks to dehumanise men and encourage men to give up on themselves, so that gynocentric bigotry can be normalised in the culture and men will accept it. This is precisely why pleasing feminists and women in general, should not be the core priority of any man. You cannot win by kowtowing to feminists or women, you just make things worse for yourself and also worse for society by pandering to female entitlement. Living life in your own way, in an authentic manner, according to your own principles and forming your own identity and setting your own direction in life, is the only path left for men to take and that is a good thing. What I have just described is men going their own way (MGTOW)13. MGTOW is a good thing, because perhaps now men will finally start taking care of themselves, standing up for themselves in their relations with women and demanding fair treatment from society and from women and not just rolling over and allowing their own exploitation.
Sydney is correct that men need a purpose or something to do and I would argue this is also true for women. People need a direction in life to give it meaning. For much of human history men have been assigned their purpose by society, just as women have been. Only recently has society become technologically advanced enough and by extension prosperous and safe enough, for the sexes to have the opportunity to assign their own purpose based on individual interests (As Dr. Warren Farrell has pointed out, men were not the oppressor, the harsh environmental pressures on human survival for most of human history and prehistory was the oppressor). Everyone needs a direction in life and that is important for men in particular, because men get their primary sense of fulfillment from taking action, undertaking challenges and accomplishing things. Men need an outlet to actively express their natural masculine talents.
However men must be given the right as women have been given, to assign their own purpose and not be lectured to on what a “real man” is by women or by other men. Yes men have an innate tendency to protect and provide, but that does not translate to men having an innate tendency to be a disposable workhorse for women and society (I am not implying that is what Sydney meant, but often in this gynocentric culture those innate drives in men can be deliberately twisted to mean that).
It is not that men need to be needed either, it is deeper than that. This is about respect. Men need to be respected for what they do for themselves, for others and for society as a whole. That includes men being respected for what they do for women and reciprocal compassion, help, respect and generosity being shown toward men by the supposedly fairer female sex. The feminist message that men have been receiving for the last 50 years and in particular the last 20 years, is that there is nothing men do that is respectable and nothing that women should do for men in return for what men do for women. Masculinity is framed as toxic and as a disorder.
We live in a world where panels of women can have televised debates about whether or not the male half of the human race is obsolete and get support from the mostly female audience for the absurd claim men are obsolete. You can listen to Karen Straughan’s critique on that disgusting bigotry here14. Women can even write books, articles and be interviewed about such bigoted opinions and have such ideas promoted and celebrated by the mainstream media. Women can write hateful articles titled, “Why Can’t We Hate Men?”15 and get it published in mainstream newspapers. Boys are now being told by society that the future is female16 and are being indoctrinated to feel inferior because they are male. The list is endless. Imagine for a moment if this was happening to women and girls. Men and boys are not suffering from a purpose void. This is a void of respect. This society has no respect for men and boys. Masculinity is continuously attacked and men and boys are constantly demonised and disrespected, despite all the amazing things they do for women and society on a daily basis.
Men and boys are internalising the message that they are not worthy of respect and nothing they do or contribute is worthy of respect. The large drops we are seeing in boy’s academic achievement and motivation in education, the claim young men are failing to launch (which is really nowhere to land) and the male suicide epidemic etc, are all symptoms of the widespread reality men and boys are being starved of respect. Men going their own way is simply that and nothing more (despite what some disingenuous people claim, it has nothing to do with hating women). MGTOW are men taking a stand to value and respect themselves, in the face of a society that encourages them to hate themselves.
MGTOW is about going your own way in life, by having the self-respect to live life according to your own principles and identity and with no regard to what this hate filled society has to say about it. Men have the right to set their own direction and find their own purpose in life, pursue their own happiness and decide for themselves how to live their own lives. Men are going their own way in increasing numbers and it is about time! If gynocentric traditonalists, feminists or men or women want to complain about MGTOW choosing to avoid marriage and to a lesser extent relationships, then they might want to look at what they can do to make marriage and relationships less toxic and healthier for men.
Marriage is no longer marriage, it is a slave contract for men. That is what feminism has done to marriage. If you think I am being hyperbolic I am not. Just ask the tens of thousands of men in US prisons that cannot make alimony and child support payments to their ex-wives, because the alimony or child support that is set by the courts exceeds their actual income. Just ask the tens of thousands of fathers that kill themselves after being alienated from their children and losing everything from divorce. Here are just two disgusting examples linked here17 and here18, illustrating how perverted marriage has become. There are so many other stories that can be shared and I would encourage men to leave their story in the comments section below this article if they like. The institution of marriage is rotten to the core. The bias men experience in divorce and family court and during the course of marriage itself is systemic and deeply tipped against men.
We all know roughly half of marriages will end in divorce and that most divorces are initiated by women and it is little wonder why when the scales are tipped so heavily in women’s favour. Whilst the nature of the misandry of marriage varies from country to country and from state to state, the common theme is one of male servitude to women and female entitlement. The sayings, “Happy Wife Happy Life” and “The Ball And Chain” did not emerge from nowhere. Marriage in the modern era is a gynocentric perversion of the original marital contract between the sexes, which feminists happily tore up and rewrote to unilaterally benefit women at the expense of men (no fault divorce, family courts, VAWA etc).
Relationships have gone down a similar path of gynocentric perversion of catering to female entitlement, which has been accelerated with the metoo movement. MGTOW is not the problem, the degradation of marriage and relationships is the problem. MGTOW is about choosing your own path in life and not kowtowing to what society or women demand men do with their own lives. Perhaps if marriage was reformed, relationships became more balanced and respect was shown again to men, fathers and masculinity, more MGTOW would freely choose to get married and have relationships on their own accord without social coercion and shaming.
Something tells me though that the gynocentric traditionalists and feminists will continue to double down and shame men for going their own way and daring to passively resist their own exploitation. Newsflash- These men stopped caring about what society thinks of what they should do with their own lives long ago and indeed for many of them the shaming was what drove them to discover MGTOW, or was the last straw that drove them to adopt a MGTOW pathway. MGTOW are the men that are prepared to say no to feminists and women, set boundaries with women, reject chivalry and stand up for themselves. They are the sort of men that can help bring about the end of feminism and that scares the shit out of the feminist mainstream media, because these men are not getting back in line and bowing their heads.
Society needs to get over its reluctance to honestly examine the actual reasons why MGTOW are avoiding marriage and relationships. Society needs to start making serious efforts to correct the numerous systemic imbalances and double standards that feminism has enshrined into our legal system and culture and address the pervasive culture of female entitlement. Until that happens, shaming MGTOW will just help increase the social phenomenon and contribute to its growth. MGTOW is now the only pathway for men to follow. Once men become aware there is no way to please women and society by pandering to female entitlement, they go red pill and then MGTOW in rapid succession.
Like I said, society has a void for respect for men and boys. Men walking away from a gynocentric society that hates them and disrespects them at every turn, is that predictable even a six-year-old could have told us this would be the result 20 years ago. This has nothing to do with men wanting women back in the kitchen or under the thumb of men and everything to do with respecting men and restoring fairness and reciprocity to the social contract between the sexes.
This gynocentric society will reap what it has sown until the imbalance between the sexes is corrected and society is prepared to confront the elephant in the room- its own gynocentrism.
