The Wildman In The Cage: Anger In Therapy (James Hillman, 1987)

/ gynocentrism

The following snippet is by James Hillman, appearing in the 1987 volume New Men, New Minds.

THE WILDMAN IN THE CAGE: A COMMENT

I want to say something about anger. The hairy man in the cage has been there a very long time. He is angry. We are all sons of Jacob, not Esau his hairy brother. Civilization looks back to Gilgamesh, the hero, not to Enkidu, his hairy companion who dies. In other words, as Bly says, the wildman is the repressed, and always threatening, and threatening in therapy as anger. What can we do with him?

First of all we have to watch out that our professional style doesn’t keep him out: the modulated voice, the quizzical gaze, the understanding manner. He does not want to be “understood,” because understanding, he feels, always tends to undermine his wants. Mirroring is not enough. To engage him, we have to raise our voices, grunt and growl. As a therapist I have to allow Esau and Enkidu into the armchair. If I repress, what the patient learns in the hour from my role-modeling is my style of repression. If I avoid the wildman, how can the patient be expected to let him in?

Anger. As a son of Mars I easily become angry and the wildman comes into my therapy sessions directly. Handling this anger in front of the patient, our handling it together, letting it walk in, walk by,  walk out — and not explaining it or apologizing for it — this is a “martial art.” It also serves to depotentiate the fear in the patient of his own wildman. It shows him that rage and outrage belong and have a place in human intercourse. And I don’t mean simply his sitting with me through an outburst of Heilige Zorn (that holy rage that fathers were proud to indulge in the German family). Nor do I mean putting him through trial by ordeal. Rather I mean recognizing anger as an impersonal factor in nature, recognizing what it brings with it–not only scorn or senseless tempestuousness, but a strength and warmth, something mineral like iron, like flint. It contributes something proud and noble, and not only mean-spirited viciousness.

Part of developing anger is extending its expression — cursing rather than bitching, sharpening the emotion’s point instead of a general hostile mood, active rather than passive aggression, holding with it (like Jacob wrestling the angel) rather than letting it all fly away.  So long as the anger stays focused only on the parents or the system or on me, the therapist, it has nothing much to do. It stays stuck, and often chained with guilt. By extending the horizon of anger outward, the patient begins to wake up to the state of the world.

“Humans are a gynocentric species” is pure myth

/ Peter Wright

Don’t let the phony simp-science con you any longer. Here’s a debunking of the “humans are a gynocentric-species” foundations that gynocentrists don’t want you to consider:

  • Gynocentric hypothesis: Women’s hypergamous behaviour indicates that human sexuality is driven by gynocentric imperatives, with societies historically prioritized around women’s desire for status.
    Fact: Women’s exaggerated hypergamy can be explained by the more recent rise of cultural narcissism which involves behaviors of self-enhancement and status-seeking. Moreover, narcissism is maladaptive in the sense that it contributes to a decrease in marriage, increasing divorce, and is implicated in plummeting birth rates.
  • Gynocentric hypothesis: Women’s neotenous facial features prove that they evolved to be prioritized and pampered more than males.
    Fact: Today women’s neoteny can be explained in larger part by the use of cosmetics, practiced childlike gestures, and increasingly, plastic surgery. In comparison to other primates, human males also display a degree of neoteny, though not usually enhanced by cosmetic artifice as we see practiced by women.
  • Gynocentric hypothesis: Women fall pregnant, give birth and care for offspring, which means that very few males are necessary for the perpetuation of the species.
    Fact: Women’s pregnancies are not more precious than male investment in child care and the provision of protective infrastructure for infant survival, without which a large percentage of infants would perish. Therefore men and women are equally important for reproductive success.
  • Gynocentric hypothesis: Women are the gatekeepers of sex who decide which males get to have sex, and males generally comply with this exclusive female choice.
    Fact:  Women are not “the gatekeepers” of sex. An overwhelming majority of men are approached by females attempting to initiate sex with them, and at other times men approach women. In these situations men have the full capacity to say “yes” or “no” to sexual opportunities, thus men are also gatekeepers of sex.  Humans are a Mutual Mate Choice (MMC) species and males invest in parenting of offspring, leading them to also be choosy about the qualities of their sexual and reproductive partners.
  • Gynocentric hypothesis: More females than males reproduced during human evolutionary history which suggests that women controlled which males had sex.
    Fact: this can be explained by the choices of powerful males sequestering large harems of women as wives and property, and by arranged marriages – neither of these are a result of female choice.
  • Gynocentric hypothesis: Men go to die in wars for the single purpose of prioritizing and protecting women, thus indicating that women are more valuable to the human species.
    Fact:  Men dying in wars is historically for the sake of defending broader affiliations like religion, king, country, democracy, or entire family networks, and not simply for the sake of women’s survival.

The list could go on. There’s no evidence that humans are a “gynocentric species” whose relationships must, by evolutionary nature, be gynocentric. At most we can say men engage in a limited number of gynocentric acts that are matched by commensurate androcentric acts and gestures by women. Eclipsing both of these motives is a wider family centrism, and genecentrism.

Why does it matter?

It matters because if men and women imagine gynocentrism to be the natural default for human relationships, and for the human species, they tend to resign themselves to unbalanced relationships based entirely on deference to women’s needs and wants. Retaining the belief that we are a gynocentric species works as a mental constraint which stymies our mental ability to override it, whereas clearing out such ideological garbage allows the mind to act more efficiently and to make wiser life decisions for the purposes of pair-bonding, families, society and for oneself.

Two-Factor Attractiveness Scale for men

/ gynocentrism

The following is an attractiveness rating scale based on the two factors of 1. sexual attractiveness and 2. pairbonding attractiveness, instead of the popular single rating factor of sexual attractiveness.

Preamble

Freud/psychoanalysis: “What decides the purpose of life is simply the programme of the pleasure principle.” (sexual excitement)

Object relations psychology: “The primary motivational factors in one’s life are based on human relationships, rather than sexual or aggressive triggers.” (pairbonding)

The above quotes imply two different kinds of female attractiveness for men, and a need for two separate rating scales: 1. sexual attractiveness, and 2. pairbonding attractiveness. Sexual attractiveness is based purely on sexual provocation & attraction: body shape, boobs, hips, hair, cleavage, thighs & bedroom eyes, etc. Pairbonding attractiveness implies the girl-next-door stereotype, more attractive for company, modesty, reliability, pair bonding and if desired, family.

Rating a woman as  9/10 in sexual attractiveness is misleading as the only qualifier of a high quality partner, as she may be only 1/10 in the pairbonding attractiveness (or it may be the converse scores).

Two-Factor Attractiveness Scale

A two-factor attractiveness scale would work like this, and examples are arbitrary, e.g.

Brittany Venti:
5/10 for sexual attractiveness
0/10 for pairbonding attractiveness.
Score: 5|0 = total score 5

Sydney Watson:
5/10 for sexual attractiveness
3/10 for pairbonding attractiveness.
Score: 5|3 = total score 8

Mikhaila Peterson:
5/10 for sexual attractiveness
1/10 for pairbonding attractiveness
Score: 5|1 = total score 6

Pearl Davis:
5/10 for sexual attractiveness
8/10 for pairbonding attractiveness
Score: 5|7 = total score 13

Nina-Marie Daniele:
7/10 Sexual attractiveness
5/10 Pairbonding attractiveness
Score: 7|5 = total score 12

Lauren Southern:
6/10 for sexual attractiveness
1/10 for pairbonding attractiveness.
Score: 6|1 = total score 7

Lauren Chen:
7/10 for sexual attractiveness
6/10 for pairbonding attractiveness
Score: 7|6 = total score 13

Amber Heard:
9/10 Sexual attractiveness
-7/10 Pairbonding attractiveness
Score: 9|-7 = total score 2

* Highest possible score is +20… Lowest possible score is -10.
 

Comment

The two attractiveness scales are based on two different human motivations mentioned above, as also outlined by Evolutionary Psychology scholar Steve Stewart-Williams who writes, quote:

“Human males have a number of well-documented, species-typical mate preferences. These include preferences for physical traits such as a low waist-to-hip ratio, facial and bodily symmetry, neoteny, and youthfulness. They also include preferences for psychological traits such as intelligence, emotional stability, and sexual fidelity.”1

Notice in this quote the first group of physiological traits match sexual attractiveness, and the latter traits match pairbonding attractiveness. Sexual attractiveness is well understood, however pairbonding attractiveness requires a little more explanation: it is the ability of a woman to cultivate a successful, long term bond with a man, which includes traits such as emotional stability, sexual fidelity, low/no body count (signifying commitment to pairbonding), low narcissism, modesty, and ability to positively work through relationship issues.

The list of traits and attributes belonging respectively to sexual and pairbonding attractiveness could be expanded into a very long list, and I do hope that someone bothers to take up that task and have some fun with it.

Lastly, although described in terms of rating women’s attractiveness, the scale has also been adapted to rate male attractiveness/value. The scale is not copyrighted and is free to use.

November 15, 2023

Reference:

[1] The Ape That Thought It Was a Peacock: Does Evolutionary Psychology Exaggerate Human Sex Differences?

 

SEE ALSO: TWO-FACTOR ATTRACTIVENESS SCALE FOR WOMEN

Narcissism Isn’t Self-Esteem

/ gynocentrism

By Paul Elam

Let me tell you what I’d do if I liked money more than self-respect. I’d go to the local shopper’s club and buy a hundred gross of small brown paper bags. Then I’d drive out-of-town to the nearest auction barn and pay them a fair price to let me go into the stalls and fill every bag with an even pound of cow crap.

Then I’d slap on some shiny pink labels with “Bag-O-Women’s-Self-Esteem,” printed on them in a distinctly womanish font, add a five, no, ten-dollar price tag, and tie ’em closed with couple of nice frou frou ribbons. Next, I’d set up a kick back arrangement with Oprah in exchange for an endorsement and take out an ad in Cosmo or Redbook.

Then I would head down to Belize and sit on the beach, throw back cocktails and check the bank account on my android 8 or 10 times a day. After about a week I’d buy the beach I was sitting on, and maybe that cute little senorita that was fetching my drinks. The word expatriate would start sounding pretty good.

And I’d be doing myself and you ladies a big favor. It would be perfect synergy. I like money, and you like buying disingenuous bullshit that feeds your narcissism.

You’ve been doing it for as long as I can remember. Fake self-esteem, like 98% of everything else that is marketed just to females, is just ego food for the insatiably hungry. It has become the psycho-porn of the western woman, with profits that would put a twinkle in Bill Gates’ eyes. How much profit exactly is anyone’s guess.

What I do know is that the narcissism racket comes in a lot of guises. I will deal with the two major ones here because that is all I have time for.

First, the plastic surgery route. With 8-year-olds getting bikini waxes and high school juniors getting fitted for an instant C cup, it is a growing industry for the grrls. Cosmetic surgeons know exactly how much narcissistic gratification results when your tits are bigger, producing more drooling mouths and hungry eyes. More adulation at first sight.

This is the narcissistic fulfillment that they pass off as self-esteem, and they use it as an advertising come on in the same way beer companies use girls in bikinis. Since you are the consumer, it sells like cheap crack in a bad neighborhood. And so now you and your sisters are lined up like schoolgirls for tickets to see Taylor Swift, to get cut and stretched, injected and inflated, and to have your fat asses suctioned down to bubbles of perfection.

But, there is one ever so slight problem. Actually, it’s a big one.

You see, narcissism isn’t self-esteem. Not even close. If you think self-esteem and the self-obsessed craving for worship are the same thing, then go buy those plastic titties. They will match your character and personality just fine, and they might go a long way toward a career as a porn star or topless dancer if the scars don’t show too much. After all, it’s common knowledge that self-esteem abounds for women who can squat down and pick up folded dollar bills off the floor with the crack of their ass while a room full of drunks howl at them.

Then you can attract more men and join the millions of other women that spend their time bitching about how those men won‘t look at them from the neck up. It’s a small price to pay for all that “self-esteem.”

Tell you what -today only- two bags of cow shit for the price of one.

Now, if you are not on an elective surgery budget, you needn’t feel left out. There is a whole world of cheaper but equally fake assistance with your problem. It’s the Stuart Smalley route of the self-esteem simpleton. And it is for sale in the wacky world of mental health. The purveyors, usually women who are every bit as narcissistic as you, are scattered across the world-wide web, thicker than Henry Kissinger’s accent. For a mere hundred or two hundred per hour, they will give you the stalwart advice to look in the mirror -each and every day- and say really affirming things like “I am unique. I am special. I am the only ‘me’ there is!” They will advise you to smile while saying it, but I dare you to simply keep a straight face.

They will tell you there are lots of reasons you don’t have self-esteem. The most common one being men that don’t see just how special you really are, or don’t tell you as much every 15 minutes. No narcissism there, eh?

Those women love to tell you that failure to saturate you with adulation is where you lose your self-esteem. They’ll tell you, with faces as straight as bourbon whiskey, that this is where your self-esteem gets lost, like the pocket you kept it in had a hole in it and a hundred hours of therapy would help you find it again.

Actually, they will make it look a little more sinister. It’s like this: You get into a relationship and at first he is all roses and chocolates and the compliments you so desperately need. After time though, he starts saying things that are not really bad, but just a little cutting, like “I’m going fishing with my friends,”

After some more time passes, it gets worse. When his fishing trips don’t stop simply because you tell him how important it is for him to give them up for you, what started as “I’m going fishing with my friends,” ends up being “Get off my back you insufferable fucking control freak.”

With that, Self-esteem, or the narcissism disguised as much, goes right into the drink.

Seriously though, ladies, disinformation about your self-esteem aside, the self-help gurus aren’t any better at it than the cutters. And they miss the most important thing about self-esteem, just like you do.

The cold truth is that if you have self-esteem, something very different from narcissism, nobody can take it from you. And if you can surrender it to someone, even an asshole who says he loves you, then you never had it to begin with.

That is partly because there is no such thing as self-esteem. It is just a made-up word; a marketing tool to get into your purse, or through you to your man’s wallet. They just call it self-esteem instead of narcissism because women won’t pay to address their narcissism.

There is, however, another asset you might consider. It’s called self-respect. And self-respect, since it must be earned, is rarely sacrificed. And if you have it, you probably don’t need a therapist or a surgeon.

When you have self-respect, respect from others is a given. But you can’t have respect from others or yourself if what you keep chasing is actually a form of worship. And if you are the average woman in today’s world, you don’t have a damned clue as to the difference. It makes selling you bags of bullshit all the easier. In fact, as long as you insist on hanging on to the idea that you’re not really a narcissist, it makes selling you anything but bullshit impossible. Narcissists don’t buy self-improvement, or, for that matter, anything truthful.

Unlike what any plastic surgeon or psychobabble spouting huckster will tell you, you have to get off your ass and earn the way people see and treat you, and the way you see and treat yourself.

You do this through the development of your character, not as a princess or little girl or the self-designated center of someone else’s universe, but as a grown human being with more focus on your responsibilities than your entitlements. Ante up like a big girl and see how quickly the world, and men, treat you like one.

But the real trick here is for you to understand that people, particularly men, failing to meet unrealistic expectations isn’t robbing you of anything. They aren’t respecting you by catering to your narcissistic childishness, they are just giving in to it, and, in the mother of all ironies, disrespecting themselves.

Now you can take this advice, which is totally free, and start applying it today. You can start by putting down the mirror and looking inward this very minute. Before you know it other people, men included, will be looking at you in a way you have likely never seen before. With genuine admiration. I know, it’s a poor substitute for adulation, but in the real world it has to do.

Or, if you just can’t wrap your mind around the idea that the onus is on you to get the job done; that self-respect is a by-product of maturity and humility, I have another form of self-esteem, right here, by the bag full.

Operators are standing by.

Arranged marriage was common for most of human history

/ Peter Ryan

*The following is an excerpt from a longer article.

Arranged marriage was common for most of human history in many cultures and is still prevalent in many traditional cultures today. Arranged marriage has been observed to be the dominant form of marriage in hunter-gather communities.

A comprehensive anthropological survey found that arranged marriage was the dominant form of marriage in approximately 85% of a sample of 190 hunter-gatherer societies around the world and only mild levels of polygyny were observed in most of those cultures1,2. The high frequency of arranged marriage in the majority of hunter-gather communities in the present day, in past societies over thousands of years of history and in present day traditional cultures, has prompted scientists to undertake genetic analysis of our ancestors to reconstruct marital systems.

Based on phylogenetic analysis1 using data from present day hunter-gatherers and mitochondrial DNA, it was concluded that arranged marriage has had a substantive prevalence and impact in these communities since the migration of humans out of Africa at least 50,000 years ago. The analysis also found that low levels of polygyny was most likely the state of ancestral marriage in past hunter-gatherer communities. It has been shown2 as well with arranged marriage, that parental control on selecting a partner for marriage is particularly strong for parents of daughters and that fathers have a greater influence than mothers in choosing a suitable partner.

This same paper that looked at 190 hunter-gatherer communities also stated that we may be overestimating female mate choice on sexual selection and underestimating the influence of parental mate choice on human evolution during our prehistory2. The study reports that whilst parents consult with their offspring, consent from their sons and daughters is usually not required and they usually comply with their parent’s choice2,3. Furthermore, virtually all reproduction in these communities was found to occur whilst a woman is married2.

We can see numerous examples of patriarchal influence by fathers in arranged marriage practices across many cultures throughout history. It is not just limited to modern hunter-gatherer communities. Another study4 examining arranged marriage across 543 different ethnographies around the world, found that parents and their offspring in all areas of the world were very frequently in vast disagreement on the choice of partner and on the relevant traits of the right partner. The parental choice of mate often strongly disagreed with the offspring’s choice of mate. The authors note that sometimes extreme methods were used to enforce the choice of mate.

These realities are part of the truths behind the half-truth of feminist patriarchy theory. Female mate choice has not been some dominant force exclusively dictating the social structure of society. The jokes about fathers with their baseball bats sizing up their daughters’ partners, comes from a long history of parents and particularly fathers regulating who their daughters mate with.

Of course it would be correct to point out that male mate choice has also been curtailed to a somewhat lesser degree by the same system of arranged marriage. Before the advent of modernity and the luxury of modern technology, what was good for the prospects of families has often been regarded as more important than the wishes of the bride and groom. Marriage was used to form alliances and this no doubt had a direct benefit on social cohesion, resource sharing and ultimately the propagation of genes for familial lineages over multiple generations and for multiple kin.

References:

  1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3083418/
  2. Sexual selection under parental choice: the role of parents in the evolution of human mating – ScienceDirect
  3. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/352710406_Parental_Influence_and_Sexual_Selection
  4. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/355453550_Arranged_Marriage_Often_Subverts_Offspring_Mate_Choice_An_HRAF-Based_Study

C.S. Lewis on the origin and nature of romantic love

/ gynocentrism

The following is an excerpt from chapter one of C.S. Lewis’  The Allegory Of Love: A Study in Medieval Tradition (1936)