Maternal Preference in 19th Century American Law

December 16, 2013September 21, 2023 / gynocentrism / 7 Comments

Posted on 12/14/2013 by Tom James

(Illustration from Little Red Cloak by Harriet Burn McKeever. Ca. 1866.)

When it was not rejected outright (as many courts did from the beginning), the supposed “paramount right of the father” to the custody of his children was subject to six major exceptions: (1) children born out of wedlock; (2) young children; (3) weak, disabled or unhealthy children; (4) daughters; (5) older male children who expressed a preference to live with their mothers; and (6) cases where the father was guilty of marital or moral misconduct, concepts which courts defined very broadly in cases where a father sought custody of a child.

Except when a court determined a mother to be an unfit parent, there were not many situations to which a “paramount right of fathers to custody” actually applied. The exceptions nearly swallowed the rule, in those few states where such a rule was ever actually applied at all. What this meant was that, in practice, the courts of every state – those that had openly rejected the “fathers’ rights” doctrine from the beginning, and those that had given it lip service while effectively nullifying it through the application of broad exceptions – decided custody on the basis of the best interests of the child, with a strong presumption that maternal custody was in a child’s best interests.[1]

The maternal preference was based on strongly held beliefs about the natural superiority of women and the inferiority of men, as a class, with respect to child-rearing functions. For example, the Illinois Supreme Court, in 1849, issued this sweeping generalization:

The mother, from her natural endowments, her position in society, and her constant association with [children], can give them that care, attention and advice so indispensable to their welfare, which a father, if the same children were left to his supervision, would be compelled in a great degree to confide to strangers.[2]

Although the maternal preference was more ardently and eloquently expressed in cases involving younger children, it manifested itself in the rules courts applied to the custody of older children, too. For example, the near-absolute rights of mothers to custody of children born out of wedlock, and of daughters, and of weak, disabled or unhealthy children, applied to cases involving children of any age.

Maternal unfitness

The custody rights of parents were never absolute. A mother, like a father, could be denied custody if a judge determined that she was unfit to be a parent.[3] The kinds of things that a court would accept as evidence of a mother’s unfitness varied considerably from what would suffice for a father, though. In general, it may be said that the grounds for declaring a mother unfit were more limited than what would suffice to declare a father unfit. And over the course of the century, this double standard became increasingly pronounced.

One clear example of the double standard was the child support obligation. Women were not expected to be the breadwinners for a family,[4] so a mother’s inability to support her children financially normally was not held to be grounds for denying her custody of her children. By contrast, courts readily denied custody to fathers – and awarded custody to the other parent, or even to a third party — on the basis that the father either could not or did not adequately provide for his children financially.

Another clear example of the double standard was marital infidelity. Courts often treated a father’s commission of adultery as grounds for denying him custody of a child but, as we have seen, a mother’s commission of adultery did not necessarily preclude an award of custody to her, especially if the child in question was young.

Moreover, regardless of the age of the child, a mother’s commission of adultery was not a bar to custody if there was evidence that she had undergone a moral reformation. And courts typically would infer a woman’s complete moral reformation simply from her termination of an adulterous relationship.

Victorian mores were such that women were seen as innocent and asexual. Therefore, any demonstration of an interest in sex, or of a lack of moral virtue, on a woman’s part was thought to be merely a temporary fall from the pedestal. The fall was assumed to have happened as a result of being pushed by a man. Accordingly, if a married woman simply renounced her interest in the man who had led her astray, then she was entitled to immediately reclaim her position on the pedestal, and all order was restored to the Victorian world.[5] Men rarely were afforded such beneficent dispensation. There was an underlying current of opinion that men who strayed from their marital obligations did so of their own free will, and were virtually assured of doing it again: Once a scoundrel, always a scoundrel, it seemed.

The principal grounds upon which a mother might be deemed to be unfit to parent in nineteenth century America were habitual drunkenness (though this did not always prevent a court from awarding her custody of a child of tender years);[6] mental illness; and severe child abuse.[7]

Notes:

[1] See Commonwealth ex rel. d’Hauteville v. Sears 279 (Phila., Pa. Ct. of General Sessions 1840) (concluding, on the basis of a review of early American custody cases, that “[t]he common law of the United States is in favour of the mother’s custody”)

[2] Miner v. Miner, 11 Ill. 43, 50 (1849)

[3] See generally American Bar Association, Guide to Marriage, Divorce, & Families 172 (2006) (observing that “[b]y the mid-1800’s, most states had come to exhibit a strong preference for the mothers in issues of custody.”) Since the maternal preference was the guidestar for custody decisions throughout most of the twentieth century, it will be explored in more depth when this blog makes it into the twentieth century.

[4] The law imposed support obligations exclusively on men, not on women. It is sometimes thought that this was an aspect of the coverture doctrine, the idea being that the person who has all the rights should also have all the responsibilities. The support obligation was exclusively male, however, even when coverture was not applicable. For example, support obligations continued to be imposed exclusively on males even after the marital unity had been dissolved by a divorce. Gilley v. Gilley, 9 A. 623 (Me. 1887); Logan v. Murray, 6 Serg. & Rawl. 175 (Pa. 1820); Campbell v. Campbell, 37 Wis. 206 (1875) (holding that a divorce may terminate a husband’s right to custody but it does not terminate his obligation to support his wife and children.) see generally Epaphroditus Peck, The Law of Persons or Domestic Relations 253-60, 278 (1913).

[5] Of course, if she refused to abandon her paramour, then the court would have no basis for a finding of moral reformation, and most likely would proceed to find her unfit to parent.

[6] See, e.g., Brandon v. Brandon, 14 Kan. 264 (1875)

[7] American Bar Association, supra note 3.

The above article reprinted with permission from author and copyright holder Tom James.

SEE ALSO: Custody of children in 1896

Margaret Cavendish: gynocentrism in 1662

December 14, 2013December 22, 2023 / gynocentrism / Leave a comment

Margaret Cavendish (1623 – 1673) was an English aristocrat, prolific writer, outspoken critic, and proto-feminist. In her 1662 essay titled Female Orations she claims that men willingly delivered to women’s disposal their power, persons, and lives, enslaving themselves to women’s will and pleasures, while considering women as lofty saints whom they adored and worshipped. Margaret Cavendish asks, “what can we desire more than to be men’s tyrants, destinies, and goddesses? – PW

Noble ladies, honorable gentlewomen, and worthy female-commoners… why should we desire to be masculine, since our own sex and condition is far the better? For if men have more courage, they have more danger; and if men have more strength, they have more labor than women have; if men are more eloquent in speech, women are more harmonious in voice; if men be more active, women are more graceful; if men have more liberty, women have more safety; for we never fight duels nor battles; nor do we go long travels or dangerous voyages; we labor not in building nor digging in mines, quarries, or pits, for metal, stone, or coals; neither do we waste or shorten our lives with university or scholastical studies, questions, and disputes; we burn nor our faces with smiths’ forges or chemists furnaces; and hundreds of other actions which men are employed in; for they would not only fade the fresh beauty, spoil the lovely features, and decay the youth of women, causing them to appear old, when they are young; but would break their small limbs, and destroy their tender lives.

Wherefore women have no reason to complain against nature or the God of nature, for although the gifts are not the same as they have given to men, yet those gifts they have given to women are much better; for we women are much more favored by Nature than men, in giving us such beauties, features, shapes, graceful demeanor, and such insinuating and enticing attractiveness, that men are forced to admire us, love us, and be desirous of us; insomuch that rather than not have and enjoy us, they will deliver to our disposals their power, persons, and lives, enslaving themselves to our will and pleasures; also, we are their saints, whom they adore and worship; and what can we desire more than to be men’s tyrants, destinies, and goddesses?

Chivalry: its distorting role in criminal sentencing

December 14, 2013September 13, 2015 / rtbavfm / Leave a comment

As we reach 100 years since the writing of Ernest Belfort Bax’ seminal work on sexism in legal practices,[1][2] we see that the problem of chivalry in criminal sentencing continues unabated.[3] Chivalric attitudes in the criminal justice system continue to result in disparities of sentencing in which women are treated more leniently than men, and men treated more severely than women, a practice that has been recognised by impartial legal minds for hundreds of years.

Here are a few more recent studies highlighting the ongoing chivalry problem:

In 1983 Christy A. Visher studied the extent of preferential treatment toward female offenders during arrest, a neglected topic in research on female criminality. The article uses data collected in 1977 during police-suspect encounters with 785 males and females to explore the existence of chivalrous treatment of female offenders in the initial stages of criminal processing. These data indicate that chivalry exists at the stage of arrest for those women who display appropriate gender behaviors and characteristics. In general, the findings suggest that female suspects who deviate from stereotypic gender expectations lose the advantage that may be extended to female offenders. Specifically, older, white, female suspects are less likely to be arrested than their younger, black or hostile sisters.[4]

In 1989 Roger Hood studied a sample of two thousand eight hundred and eighty-four male and four hundred and thirty-three female defendants in crown courts. He compared the sentencing of males and females, controlling for variables which he found affected the sentencing of men, and found that both black and white women are more likely to be cautioned than prosecuted, and were given custodial sentences 34 to 38 percent less often than men in similar cases. As an explanation for this disparity Hood points to the chivalry thesis of criminal sentencing which argues that most police, judges and magistrates are men and men are socialised to be chivalrous to women.[5]

In 2001 Victoria Castleman evaluated gender differences in media portrayals of teachers that are accused of committing sex offenses with minor students. Findings show that gender does play an important role in the media treatment of offenders; females receive more news coverage than male sex offenders, female offenders are treated as mentally ill lovers as compared to a male “predator” portrayal, and females are treated more leniently than male teachers who commit sex offenses with minor students. These findings support the chivalry hypothesis of female deviance which purports that because women are viewed as weak and vulnerable, they are treated in a more patriarchal lenient manner. In addition to contributing to the current literature, this study addresses how societal perceptions of sex offenders are being shaped by media and the consequential implications on victim reporting practices and the criminal justice system.[6] Similar finding were concluded by researchers Randa Embry and Phillip M. Lyons, Jr. in thier 2012 study of male and female sex offenders which finds men receive longer sentences for sex offenses than women.[7]

To show just how little the problem of chivalry has altered, one could cite the recent proposal by the UK justice taskforce that all women’s prison’s should close down, and in their place female criminals should be offered healthcare services, housing, and drug abuse treatment rather than holding them to the same standards of punishment to which the legal system holds men.[8] Clearly there is much work to do before society reaches the conclusion that men’s rights are human rights, and that women must be held fully accountable for their actions.

Sources:

[1] Ernest Belfort Bax, The Legal Subjection of Men, New age Press, 1908
[2] Ernest Belfort Bax, ‘The Fraud of Feminism’, Grant Richards Publisher, 1913
[3] Warren Farrell, ‘the Myth of Male Power’, Random House, 1994
— Chapter 11. How The System Protects Women, Or… Two Different Laws We Live In
— Chapter 12. Women Who Kill Too Much and the Courts That Free Them: The Twelve “Female-Only” Defenses
[4] C.A. Visher,‘Gender, Police Arrest Decisions, and Notions of Chivalry’, in Journal of Criminology, Vol-21, Issue 1, 1983
[5] Roger Hood, ‘Race and Sentencing: A Study in the Crown Court’, Oxford University Press, 1993
[6] Victoria Castleman, Chivalry Isn’t Dead: Gender Differences in the Media Treatment of Teacher Sex Offenders 2001
[7] Randa Embry and Phillip M. Lyons, Jr., Sex-Based Sentencing: Sentencing Discrepancies Between Male and Female Sex Offenders 2012
[8] Women’s prisons should close, says justice taskforce, 2011

Jane Anger: gynocentrism in 1589

December 13, 2013December 22, 2023 / Peter Wright / Leave a comment

The following quotes written by ‘Jane Anger’, sixteenth century female English author on the subject of men’s imperfections – PW.

“Wee are contrary to men, because they are contrarie to that which is good: because they are spurblind, they cannot see into our natures, and we too well (though we had but halfe an eie) into their conditions, because they are so bad: our behaviours alter daily, because mens vertues decay hourely. If Hesiodus had with equity as well looked into the life of man, as he did presisely search out the qualities of us women, he would have said, that if a woman trust unto a man, it shal fare as well with her, as if she had a waight of a thousand pounds tied about her neck, and then cast into the bottomles seas: for by men are we confounded though they by us are sometimes crossed.

Our tongues are light, because earnest in reprooving mens filthy vices, and our good counsel is termed nipping injurie, in that it accordes not with their foolish fancies. Our boldnesse rash, for giving Noddies nipping answeres, our dispositions naughtie, for not agreeing with their vilde mindes, and our furie dangerous, because it will not beare with their knavish behaviours. If our frownes be so terrible, and our anger so deadly, men are too foolish in offering occasions of hatred, which shunned, a terrible death is prevented.

There is a continuall deadly hatred betweene the wilde boare and tame hounds, I would there were the like betwixt women and men unles they amend their maners, for so strength should predominate, where now flattery and dissimulation hath the upper hand. The Lion rageth when he is hungrie, but man raileth when he is glutted. The Tyger is robbed of her young ones, when she is ranging abroad, but men rob women of their honour undeservedlye under their noses. The Viper stormeth when his taile is trodden on, & may not we fret when al our bodie is a footstoole to their vild lust: their unreasonable mindes which knowe not what reason is, make them nothing better then bruit beastes.”

“The creation of man and woman at the first, hee being formed In principio of drosse and filthy clay, did so remaine until God saw that in him his workmanship was good, and therfore by the transformation of the dust which was loathsome unto flesh, it became purified. Then lacking a help for him, GOD making woman of mans fleshe, that she might bee purer then he, doth evidently showe, how far we women are more excellent then men.

Our bodies are fruitefull, wherby the world encreaseth, and our care wonderful, by which man is preserved. From woman sprang mans salvation. A woman was the first that beleeved, & a woman likewise the first that repented of sin. In women is onely true Fidelity: (except in her) there is constancie, and without her no Huswifery. In the time of their sicknes we cannot be wanted, & when they are in health we for them are most necessary. They are comforted by our means: they nourished by the meats we dresse: their bodies freed from diseases by our cleanlines, which otherwise would surfeit unreasonably through their own noisomnes. Without our care they lie in their beds as dogs in litter, & goe like lowsie Mackarell swimming in the heat of sommer.

They love to go hansomly in their apparel, and rejoice in the pride thereof, yet who is the cause of it, but our carefulnes, to see that every thing about them be curious. Our virginitie makes us vertuous, our conditions curteous, & our chastitie maketh our truenesse of love manifest. They confesse we are necessarie, but they would have us likewise evil. That they cannot want us I grant: yet evill I denie: except onely in the respect of man, who (hating all good things, is onely desirous of that which is ill, through whose desire, in estimation of conceit we are made ill.

But least some shuld snarle on me, barking out this reason: that none is good but God, and therfore women are ill. I must yeeld that in that respect we are il, & affirm that men are no better, seeing we are so necessarie unto them. It is most certain, that if we be il, they are worse: for Malum malo additum efficit malum peius: & they that use il worse then it shold be, are worse then the il. And therefore if they wil correct Magnificat, they must first learn the signification therof. That we are liberal, they wil not deny sithence that many of them have (ex confessio) received more kindnes in one day at our hands, then they can repay in a whole yeare: & some have so glutted themselves with our liberality as they cry No more. But if they shal avow that women are fooles, we may safely give them the lie: for my selfe have heard some of them confesse that we have more wisdome then need is, & therfore no fooles: & they lesse then they shold have, & therfore fooles.

It hath bene affirmed by some of their sex, that to shun a shower of rain, & to know the way to our husbands bed is wisedome sufficient for us women: but in this yeare of 88, men are grown so fantastical, that unles we can make them fooles, we are accounted unwise. And now (seeing I speake to none but to you which are of mine owne Sex,) give me leave like a scoller to proove our wisdome more excellent then theirs, though I never knew what sophistry ment.

Ther is no wisdome but it comes by grace, this is a principle, & Contra principium non est disputandum: but grace was first given to a woman, because to our lady: which premises conclude that women are wise. Now Primum est optimum, & therefore women are wiser then men. That we are more witty which comes by nature, it cannot better be prooved, then that by our answers, men are often droven to Non plus, & if their talk be of worldly affaires, with our resolutions they must either rest satisfied, or proove themselves fooles in the end.”

Masculine submission and ‘love service’ in the troubadour lyric

December 13, 2013April 10, 2025 / gynocentrism / 1 Comment

The following account of ‘love service’ displayed by men toward women during the Middle Ages – from the book Masculine Submission in Troubadour Lyric by Sandra R Alfonsi – PW.

_______________________

The troubadours lived and functioned within a society based on feudalism. Certain ones were themselves feudal lords; others were liegemen dependent on such lords for their sustinence. The troubadours who were members of the clergy were also actively involved in this feudal society. It is only natural that their literature reflect some traits of the age in which it was created.

Scholars soon saw striking parallels between feudalistic practices and certain tenets of Courtly Love. The comparisons lie in certain resemblances shared by vassalage and the courtly “love service” expected of men. Fundamental to both was the concept of obedience. As a vassal, the liegeman swore obedience to his lord. As a courtly lover, the poet chose a lady to whom he was required to swear obedience. Humility and obedience were two concepts familiar to medieval man, active components of his Weltanschauung. Critics, such as Erich Kohler, have found them exhibited in both the life and literature of that time.

The entire concept of love-service was patterned after the vassal’s oath to serve his lord with loyalty, tenacity, and courage. These same virtues were demanded of the poet. Like the liegeman vis-a-vis his sovereign, the poet approached his lady with fear and respect. Submitted to her, obedient to her will, he awaited a fief or honor as did the vassal. His compensation took many forms: the pleasure of his lady’s company in her chamber or in the garden; an avowal of her love; a secret meeting; a kiss or even le surplus, complete unity.

Like the lord, the woman who was venerated and served was expected to reward her faithful and humble servant. Her failure to do so was considered a breach of “contract.” Most critics who support the theory that the courtly-love-service was formed by assimilation to the feudal service inherent in vassalage, credit Guillaume IX with its creation. However, the universality of these parallels cannot be doubted:

The posture of the true lover is so familiar that we have come to accept it as the hallmark. A seal attributed to Cononde Bethune represents it perfectly. This depicts in an oval cartouche, an armed knight on his knees before a lady. His body is shrouded in a mail hauberk. His head is completely concealed in his helmet. He wears spurs but no sword. The lady stands at arms length, chastely robed, her regular nonedescript features framed in long braids, presumably blonde, and between her outstretched palms the knight’s hands are placed in the formal gesture of homage. Within the cartouche, in the space above the helmet of the kneeling knight is inscribed a single word: MERCI. ¹

The similarities between courtly service and vassalage are indeed striking. Although of a more refined character than an ordinary vassal, the poet-lover is portrayed as his lady’s liegeman, involved in the ceremony of homage and pictured at the moment of the immixtio manuum. His reward for faithful service will doubtlessly include the osculum.

The influence of feudalism upon courtly love was, in my opinion, twofold: it provided the poets with a well-organized system of service after which they might pattern their own; it furnished them with a highly developed vocabulary centered around the service owed by a vassal to a lord. Feudalistic vocabulary was comprised of certain basic terminology indicative of the ties which legally bound a man to his lord in times of peace and war.

1. Servitium
In Merovingian Gaul the position of the feudal lord was expressed by the verb suscipere ‘to take into one’s charge,’ while the verb commandare ‘to put oneself in the charge of’ represented the role of the vassal. The obligations accepted by the latter formed the servitium ‘service.’ This term, used in Classical Latin to denote slavery, had begun to lose this connotation by the fourth century, and during the Middle Ages, and had come to mean the duties of a freeman vis a vis a feudal lord.

2. Dominus
The Latin term dominus was used to denote the feudal lord served by the vassal.

3. Homo
From the beginning of the ninth century, suus homo ‘his man’ became the expression by which the position and duties of the vassal were expressed. During the eleventh century, the expression homo ligius ‘liegemen’ became popular.

4. Homage
The original terms used to denote homage were vassaticum and vassalaticum. Since the old French vasselage did not carry the meaning of homage due to the feudal lord, variations on the Latin hominum appeared in the eleventh century: hominagium, hominiaticum, homagium. The word hommage became popular during the twelfth century, denoting servitium homini, the honorable service due to the lord.

5. Legalitas
The term loyaute ‘loyalty’ was used to define the bond between vassal and lord.

6. Honor
The term onor was used to designate any compensation received by the vassal in return for his services. The concept of tenure tenire was attched to this idea. During the classical age tenire meant to occupy or possess; during the feudal age, it acquired as well the meaning of a rapport between former proprietor and the person now possessing the land through certain services rendered to the former. This relationship was expressed with the verb retenir ‘to retain,’ implying the retention of the vassal by the lord in return for his services. *

It was only natural that such terms, as well as their variants, should appear within the poetic love service created by the troubadours. Feudal vocabulary provided for all aspects surrounding the love service; it was well known and popularly understood. Its usage carried with it all the connotations inherent in the concept, without necessitating further explications by the poet.

An extensive examination of the poetic love-service , its vocabulary and stylistic traits, is to be found in the second part of this work. It is questionable whether feudalism may be considered as the primary source for either the poetic love-service or the theme of masculine submission. The very essence of both rests in the elevation and adoration of the woman chosen by the poet. Feudalism, with its bellicose concerns and masculine point of view, could not have instilled the Cult of Woman in these poets. Even the elevated social position held by women in Southern France and her presence as the “mistress of the manor” during the absence of her husband cannot explain the origin of this cult. It cannot be denied that much of this poetry was written to please the women who provided the troubadours with a means of sustenance by engaging them to entertain them in their chateaux. But such external social realities do not explain the origins of the internal revolution which culminated in poetic worship of woman.

___________________________________

Reference:

[1] Maurice Valency, In Praise of Love, Macmillan Co. 1958

Note:

*This configuration of unequal power is the central feature of the poet-lover’s positioning of himself with regard to the love object. Drawing on the stratification and class-consciousness of medieval society, the canso describes primarily in terms of social hierarchy the woman’s psycho-sexual power to determine the outcome of the relationship. Thus the troubadour’s lady is regularly portrayed in terms denoting aristocracy, such as ‘‘noble’’ rica, franca or ‘‘high born’’ de bon aire, de aut paratge, whereas the poet stresses his own subordination, describing himself as ‘‘humble’’ umil, umelian, ‘‘submissive’’ aclin, and ‘‘obedient’’ obedien. The culmination of this tendency is one of the most pervasive images of troubadour poetry, the ‘‘feudal metaphor,’’ which compares the relationship of the lover and his lady to that which obtains between a vassal and his lord. The poet-lover presents himself to his lady in an attitude of feudal homage omenatge, ‘‘kneeling’’ a/degenolhos with ‘‘hands clasped’’ mans jonchas. He declares himself to be his lady’s ‘‘man’’ ome or ‘‘liege man’’ ome lige and refers to the lady as his ‘‘lord’’ senhor, midons. He asks her to ‘‘retain’’ retener him as her ‘‘servant’’ ser, servidor or to take him into her ‘‘service’’ servizi. According to a military variant of the feudal metaphor, the lover ‘‘surrenders’’ se rendre to the lady, declaring himself ‘‘vanquished’’ vencut or ‘‘conquered’’ conques, and asks for her ‘‘mercy’’ merce. [Note excerpted from ‘Why is la Belle Dame sans Merci?’ by Don A. Monson]

Male Masochism in Victorian women’s literature

December 7, 2013December 20, 2023 / gynocentrism / 1 Comment

The following mentions of gynocentric themes in Victorian literature are excerpted from the book Male Masochism by Carol Siegal ¹. Notice the thematic continuity of this literature with the earlier sexual-relations contract first invented in Medieval Europe:

“A great deal of what [Victorian] women’s literary works had to say about gender relations may have been as disquieting as feminist political manifestos, and ironically so, in that the novels seem most anti-male in the very places where they most affirm a traditionally male vision of love. While women’s lyric poetry tended to reverse the conventional gender roles in love by representing the female speaker as the lover instead of the object of love, women’s fiction most frequently reproduced the images, so common in prior texts by men, of the self-abasing male lover and his exacting mistress. For example, in Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff declares himself Cathy’s slave; in Jane Eyre, Rochester’s desire for Jane is first inspired and then intensified by his physically dependent position; in Middlemarch, Will Ladislaw silently vows that Dorothea will always have him as her slave, his only claim to her love lies in how much he has suffered for her. In several Victorian novels by women, men must undego quasi-ritualized humiliation or punishment before being judged deserving of their lady’s attention. For instance, in Olive Schreiner’s Story of an African Farm, the fair Lyndall condescends to treat her admirers tenderly after one has been horsewhipped and the other has dressed himself in women’s clothes to wait on her. Although Victorian women’s novels do explore the emotional insecurities of the heroines, their apparent self-possession is also stressed, in marked contrast to their lovers’ displays of agony, desperation, and wounds.”

The author goes on to say that male masochism and the dominatrix-like behavior of women in much literature is continuous with courtly love literature from the Middle Ages. And whilst some libertines self-consciously chose their lowly position in relation to women, the men described in Victorian women’s novels lacked such volition and were helplessly controlled by the power of love and beauty:

“These texts also insist that the true measure of male love is lack of volition. While the heroines make choices that define them morally, the heroes are helplessly compelled by love, and not judged to love unless they are helpless. In this respect Victorian women’s fiction recovers the ethos so often expressed in medieval courtly romance that love must be “suffered as a destiny to be submitted to and not denied.” It also departs from the conventions of medieval romance in describing the helpless submission to love as an attribute of true manliness, and thus Victorian women’s fiction directly attacks the degeneration of chivalry into the self-conscious and controlled “gallantry” of eighteenth century libertines.”

Source:

[1] Carol Siegal, Male Masochism, Indiana University Press, 1995 (pp. 12-13)

Forget the ring

December 5, 2013January 24, 2024 / gynocentrism / 6 Comments

Modern marriage evolved from a historical ritual designed to indenture subordinates to their masters, though most people have forgotten this history. However, many of the behaviors and rituals central to this history can still be discerned in modern marriage.

It’s thought that the practice of exchanging wedding rings extends far back into ancient history, with evidence of the ritual being found in Ancient Egypt, Rome, and within several religious cultures. However our modern-day practice of giving wedding rings has a very different origin and meaning, one which may make you, well, cringe a little. As suggested on the Society of Phineas blog, the ring functions as a feudalistic contract between the man and his wife:

“The ring functions as a proof of ability in the supplicant vassal’s pledge to the wife. This is true given the traditional expectation of the amount of resources to be expended in purchasing the ring along with providing for the wedding day. In this gynocentric environment, it’s total sacrilege to not present a woman with her One Ring or to present one that is substandard to her or her friends. She uses her One Ring as a social proof of her status around Team Woman (it’s a competition much like Valentine’s Day gifts), as she will not hesitate to show it off as much as possible when she first gets it if it meets with her approval.” ¹

This contention finds support from medievalist scholars who show the origin of our ring-exchanging ritual is found in early literary sources and depictions of the Middle Ages. H.J. Chaytor, for instance wrote “The lover was formally installed as such by the lady, took an oath of fidelity to her and received a kiss to seal it, a ring or some other personal possession.” Professor Joan Kelly gives us a tidy summary of the practice:

“A kiss (like the kiss of homage) sealed the pledge, rings were exchanged, and the knight entered the love service of his lady. Representing love along the lines of vassalage had several liberating implications for aristocratic women. Most fundamental, ideas of homage and mutuality entered the notion of heterosexual relations along with the idea of freedom. As symbolized on shields and other illustrations that place the knight in the ritual attitude of commendation, kneeling before his lady with his hands folded between hers, homage signified male service, not domination or subordination of the lady, and it signified fidelity, constancy in that service.” ²

Like the description given by Kelly, men continue to go down on one knee and are quick to demonstrate humility by claiming the wedding is “her day”, betraying the origin and conception of marriage as more feudalistic in its structure than Christian. With gestures like these it’s clear that modern marriage is based on the earlier feudalistic ritual known as a ‘commendation ceremony’ whereby a bond between a lord and his fighting man (ie. his vassal) was created. The commendation ceremony is composed of two elements, one to perform the act of homage and the other an oath of fealty. For the Oath of fealty ceremony the vassal would place his hands on a Bible (as is still practiced) and swear he would never injure his overlord in any way and would remain faithful. Once the vassal had sworn the oath of fealty, the lord and vassal had a feudal relationship.

Because this archaic contract remains current in contemporary marriages, we might also question our typical concepts of obeyance between a husband and wife. In older Christian ceremonies the women sometimes vowed to love, cherish and “obey” her husband. However, because framed within a feudalistic-style relationship the woman’s obeyance was strongly offset and perhaps overturned whereby in practice she tended to be the dominant power-holder in relation to the man. In the latter case the wife as more powerful figure is merely obeying -if she is obeying anything at all- her responsibilities as a kindly overlord to her husband. Notice here that we have switched from the notion of a benevolent patriarchy to a kindly gynocentrism which feminists like to promote as loving, nurturing, peace-loving and egalitarian.

Love service

The Medieval model of service to a feudal lord was transferred wholesale into relationships as “love service” of men toward ladies. Such service is the hallmark of romantic love and is characterized by men’s deference to a woman who is viewed as a moral superior. During this period women were often referred to by men as domnia (dominant rank), midons (my lord), and later dame (honored authority) which terms each draw their root from the Latin dominus meaning “master,” or “owner,” particularly of slaves. Medieval language expert Peter Makin confirms that the men who used these terms must have been aware of what they were saying:

“William IX calls his lady midons, which I have translated as ‘my Lord’… These men knew their Latin and must have been aware of its origins and peculiarity; in fact it was clearly their collective emotions and expectations that drew what amounts to a metaphor from the area of lordship, just as it is the collective metaphor-making process that establishes ‘baby’ as a term for a girlfriend and that creates and transforms language constantly. In the same way, knowing that Dominus was the standard term for God, and that don, ‘lord’, was also used for God, they must also have felt some connection with religious adoration. ³

Recapitulation

Let’s recapitulate the practices associated with the ring-giving ritual of marriage:

1. Genuflection: man goes down on one knee to propose
2. Commendation token: rings exchanged
3. Vassal’s kiss: reenacted during the ceremony
4. Homage and fealty: implicit in marriage vows
5. Subservience: “It’s her special day”
6. Service: man prepares to work for wife for his whole life
7. Disposability: “I would die for you”.

Is it any wonder that women are so eager to get married and that men are rejecting marriage in droves? The feudalistic model reveals exactly what men are buying into via that little golden band – a life commitment to a woman culturally primed to act as our overlord. As more men become aware of this travesty they will choose to reject it, and for those still considering marriage I encourage you to read this article a second time; your ability to keep or lose your freedom depends upon it.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEr0BPOfVw4&w=560&h=315]

[1] Website: Society of Phineas
[2] Joan Kelly, Women, History, and Theory, University of Chicago Press, 1986
[3] Peter Makin, Provence and Pound, University of California Press, 1978

The other Beauty Myth

December 1, 2013June 22, 2023 / Peter Wright / 1 Comment

In 1991 Naomi Wolf wrote The Beauty Myth where she claimed women are oppressed by cultural pressure to be beautiful. What she failed to tell us is where this habit originated, and how it is essentially used to gain power over the male sex.

In human beings, various compulsions and desires come into conflict with one another, each jostling for momentary supremacy where one imperative will usurp the claims of another. That game has reached a problematical impasse during the last 800 years because, during that relatively short time span, human culture has thrown its patronage into developing, intensifying and enforcing sexual gamesmanship to the degree that our sexual compulsions appear pumped up on steroids and taken to extremes never before seen in human society (myths about widespread Roman orgies notwithstanding). The obsession with female beauty forms a significant part of the problem.

If we lived back in Ancient Greece, Rome or anywhere else we would view sexual intercourse as little more than a bodily function akin to eating, defecating and sleeping – a basic bodily function without the hype. After the Middle Ages, however, it developed into a commodity to pimp and trade, and the new cult of sexualized romance that arose from it resulted in a frustration of our more basic attachment needs – a frustration aided and abetted by social institutions placing sexual manipulation at the center of human interactions. This development entrenched a new belief that beauty was the native possession of women, and only women, and conversely that the desire to possess beauty was the lot of males alone, thus creating a division between the sexes that remains in place today.

Compare this division with the beliefs of older cultures – India, Rome, Greece etc – and we see a stark contrast, with classical cultures equally apportioning beauty to males and sexual desire to females. In ancient Greece for example males used to grow their hair long and comb it adoringly, rub olive oil on their skin and pay devoted attention to attire -the colors of the toga, the materials it was woven from, the way it was draped on the body- and there is perhaps no modern culture on earth where male beauty is more marvelously celebrated in the arts than it was in Greece.

Another example comes from the Biblical Song of Solomon, in which the appreciation of beauty and associated longing flows both ways between the man and women, whereas in romantic love beauty is ascribed only to the female, and desire only to the male – the roles are radically split. Moreover, in the Song of Songs there is no hint of the gynocentric arrangement; no appearance of man as a vassal towards women who are both Lord and deity. For the lovers in Song of Songs there already exists a God and so there is no worshipping of the woman as a quasi divinity who can redeem the man’s pathetic existence – as in “romantic” love.

According to Robert Solomon, romantic love required a dramatic change in the self-conception of women. He recounts;

They too were freed from an identity that depended wholly on their social roles, that is, their blood and legal ties with men, as daughters, wives and mothers. It is in this period in Christian history that looks become of primary importance, that being beautiful now counts for possibly everything, not just an attractive feature in a daughter or wife (which probably counted very little anyway) but as itself a mark of character, style, personality. Good grooming, as opposed to propriety, came to define the individual woman, and her worth, no longer dependent on the social roles and positions of her father, husband or children, now turned on her looks. The premium was placed on youth and beauty, and though some women even then may have condemned this emphasis as unjust, it at least formed the first breach with a society that, hitherto, had left little room for personal initiative or individual advancement. The prototype of the Playboy playmate, we might say, was already established eight hundred years ago, and did not require, as some people have argued recently, Hugh Hefner’s slick centerfolds to make youth, beauty and a certain practiced vacuity into a highly esteemed personal virtue. The problem is why we still find it difficult to move beyond this without, like some Platonists, distaining beauty altogether – the opposite error. [1]

Modesta Pozzo penned a book in the 1500’s entitled The Worth of Women: their Nobility and Superiority to Men. The work purportedly records a conversation among seven Venetian noblewomen that explores nearly every aspect of women’s experience. One of the topics explored is women’s use of cosmetics and clothing to enhance beauty, including mention of hair tinting for which there is twenty-six different recipes. The following is the voice of Cornelia who explains that men’s sexual desire of women (and women’s control of that process via beauty) is the only reason men can love:

“Thinking about it straight, what more worthy and what lovelier subject can one find than the beauty, grace and virtues of women?… I’d say that a perfectly composed outer corporeal form is something most worthy of our esteem, for it is this visible outer form that is the first to present itself to our eye and our understanding: we see it and instantly love and desire it, prompted by an instinct embedded in us by nature. “It’s not because men love us that they go in for all these displays of love and undying devotion, rather, it’s because they desire us. So that in this case love is the offspring, desire the parent, or, in other words, love is the effect and desire the cause. And since taking away the cause means taking away the effect, that means that men love us for just as long as they desire us and once desire, which is the cause of their vain love, has died in them (either because they have got what they wanted or because they have realized that they are not going to be able to get it), the love that is the effect of that cause dies at exactly the same time.” [written 1592]

What I find interesting is that since the Middle Ages, as evidenced in Cornelia’s words, we have collectively conflated male love with sexual desire as if they are inseparable, and to women’s ability to control that male “love” through a skillful cultivation of beauty. One might be forgiven for refusing to believe this is love at all, that it is instead the creation of an intense desire for sexual pleasure due to the call of beauty. Observation shows that sex-generated “love” does not necessarily lead to compatibility for partners across a broad range of interests, and may occur between people who are, aside from sexual attraction, totally incompatible, with little in common, which is why the relationship often goes so badly when there occur gaps in the sexual game.

This raises the alternative notion of love based on compatibility, on what we might term ‘friendship-love’ which is not based solely on sexual desire – in fact sexual desire is not even essential to it though often present. Friendship love is about interests the partners share in common, a meeting of compatible souls and a getting to know each other on a level playing field. However aiming for friendship-love means women are no longer required to pull the strings of sexual desire as is practiced with beauty-based allure, which ultimately frees men and women to meet as equals in power and, with luck, find much in common to sustain a durable relationship.

Nancy Friday: The Power of Beauty, 1997

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji3cxTidTxs&w=560&h=315]

[1] Robert Solomon, Love: Emotion, Myth, Metaphor, 1990 (p.62)
[2] Modesta Pozzo, The Worth of Women: their Nobility and Superiority to Men, 2007
[3] Nancy Friday, The Power of Beauty, 1997

Hail to the V

November 30, 2013March 3, 2024 / gynocentrism / 4 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufdpf7bCXBo&w=550&h=370]

In several posts and on various other blogger’s comment threads I’ve debated that the social paradigms of chivalry and feminism are cultural engineerings of the feminine imperative. I delved into the history of chivalry in The Feminine Imperative – Circa 1300 and made my best attempt to outline the history of chivalry, the feminine bastardization of it and how it was the cultural parallel and precursor to feminism. Naturally the more romantic leaning of my critics chose to keep their noses in their holy books and epic poems rather than take the time to consider the historical underpinnings of what we now consider chivalry and monogamous romantic love.

________________________________________________

A search phrase I was recently using came back with this imbedded in the result:

“Cultural historians believe that romantic love was created sometime in the 14th century”.

The link stated that the idea of “Romantic Love” was created by troubadours in verses by the idea of “Courtly Love” that arose in its beginnings the the end of the 12th century. So I started going back,back,back,back, back (-Chris Berman) and I found this: The Art of Courtly Love

The book is important. The foreword by John Jay Perry was written in 1941. The title of this book is “The Art of Courtly Love” but it is actually a Victorian Era title imposed on the work that has several other different titles as a function of the era when the translation was performed, country where the translator lived, and particular social attitudes prevalent when and where the translator produced the translation. I think the “Romantic Era” was when these ideas of “courtly love” finally percolated up into mainstream thought, well, actually women’s mainstream thought, and defined love as we believe it be today, or at least defined it as women wish that definition to be imposed on men.

The title I generally use is “Treatise on Love”. Andreas Capellenus was the Chaplain of Countess Marie, and the preface goes into all of this history and I don’t want to get it into it. Read it.

It is the seminal work on the subject and there is no earlier work by a European. There is reference to Ibn Hazm, an Islamic writer from Spain, who began to define the idea of “love” in Islamic cultures. It went through a series of other writers in the 13th century and orally communicated through verse and song during the 14th century and made its way into the consciousness of western thought from the 14th century on.

The key thing is that these Troubadours were not some “traveling band” singing for their supper. Maybe later, but at this time, they were major nobles, from both the nobility and the higher noble classes. The first major one referenced was Duke William of Aquitaine, who was Marie’s grandfather. These were important people of the time. This would maybe be like, God forbid, Senator Harry Reid, breaking into a song after dinner about the importance of passing spending bills to ease the particular issues about the “sequester” that are key issues to Democrats or Ben Bernake letting loose about the Quantitative Easing. Ok, maybe not exactly.

The issue at the time, was that, as the historians state, that “Love as we know it did not exist. Marriage was as much as about land and politics as anything else”. It was said you “Married a fiefdom and a wife got thrown in the bargain”. Imagine a time where firelight and sunlight were practically the only light, when people rarely traveled more than 12 miles from their place of birth, when nothing, and I mean nothing, changed. The major cathedral built in Nimes took 38 generations to complete. The skyline never changed, towns remained the same. There were no books. None. All knowledge was conveyed orally and generally died with a person. The only cultural conditioning was what you got by watching the people you saw. And you saw very few people. Even at the peasant level, most marriages were the tossing together of two available young people, and that was that. But particularly at the noble level, all marriages were entirely based on practical considerations and nothing to do with “love” as we know it.

And the major church writers the time, just skewered women. The preface named several, and while I can’t find actual text of the writers specific to women, Bernard de Morlaix, John of Salisbury, I can find overall references to what they said about morality in general. They were a group that very much about self control. And it was thought that due to the “wickedness” of women, it was probably superior to remain a virgin. And thus the idea of the “celibate” priest was born. He could not be “godly”, and should be suspect, if he allowed himself to come under the temptation of women.These guys were definitely the “Red Pill” writers of the time. The general idea was not so much that sex was bad, but women were so bad, and sex was lure, the hook, so they damned sex as a means to keep men from getting ensnared in the traps and wickedness that women lay for men. And the thought has a little bit of merit, I must say.

So, think about this. The men in power at the time, saw some of the stuff we see, and they gave a huge “thumbs down” on women. Huge.

Now, heading into the second 500 years of Christianity, throw a “rubbing elbows” with Moslems in Spain, and this idea of “love” starts to percolate about, sort of this “counter-culture” idea of the time. It did not exist at all before in European culture, this idea of “soul mates” and “intertwined” spirits and “the ennobling qualities of love”, love as the be all and end all, the very reason to live.

And it was made up.

By women. Duh?

So there were moments, during this period 1170-1250 were in certain places the women got control. It the case of this Marie, she got control of this region “Troyes” in southern France when her son was named to be noble over the region and he was 11 years old. So she accompanied him down there and was the defacto “regent” during his “minority”. Her husband became King while she was down there. So this was a woman of major influence. And her sister was married to someone that also became King of someplace else. Their mother had been both Queen of France and then Queen of England after she divorced the King of France. This was a powerful woman who got what she wanted. And two of the chief architects of “love” were her two daughters, who married extremely high status men.

The same thing happened at the same time in about 3 other major places in the area, and these women, began to “flirt: with idea of “Courtly Love”. Flirt maybe is a little weak of word. But the general idea of most writers about the theme is that they “Proposed it as countervailing religion or thought to Christianity.” Christianity had so vilified women during the past 200 years, and this “love” stuff was really one of the first “feminisms”.

And near I am can tell, it was literally the birth of the Feminine Imperative. At least, the birth of the version that we know today.

The general idea was this.

“Women are the love. Women give praise to men and the power of that praise is the driving motivator of men. All good things that men do are only done in the true spirit of love to earn the right to the love that the woman confers to the men. Women define what is good. Women confer status on men by allowing them to receive the love they receive from women as a result of high character and accomplishment”.

Sound familiar.

So that was why some “Sir Goodguy” white knight would tie the scarf of the woman around his neck during some contest. It was his sign to her that he was doing this brave dead for her love and his recognition that she saw him as good and worthy.

They actually created these things called “The Court of Love”. And these men and women, and you can imagine the men in those courts were the 12th or 13th century equivalents of Manginas, would literally “rule” on love. They would debate questions, actions, and then determine is an act was good or bad and then that further defined “love”. Remember again, this was not idle chit chat after dinner. These were the major movers and shakers of the time. This was the court that would go on to exert cultural and intellectual control over Europe until 1914. And really even later than that. For nearly 1000 years, the French held sway in everything and Paris was the center of the world. Except at this time, this part of France, the south was the big deal.

One example I saw was letter written by a man that said, he and a woman were having heated discussion of two points, (1) Can true love exists in a marriage. (2) Can there be jealousy between the married partners. The Countess, the Queen of Love, at that time wrote back and said “No, love cannot exist in a marriage. Love is freely given and asks for nothing in return. Marriage is a contract of duties. So there is no love in a marriage. And Jealousy is a prerequisite of love and since only lovers could be jealous and since married people were not lovers, then their could be no jealousy in a marriage. ” And that was that. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Love had issued a ruling. And its weight was everything.

And needless to say, it was a mighty convenient development for women that were traded off into marriage as pawns attached to land. So it conferred the key power of social definition and the final say of what is good in men, and good in society, and that women should and will be the definers, and the arbiters, and the judges of all of that.

The translators, and this particular author John Jay Parry, mention that was nothing particularly distinguishing about Andreas Capellanus that would make it seem like he was the person to end up as this great literary figure that wrote a work that is “One of those capital works that explain the thought of a great epoch, which explain the secret of a civilization”. Parry said often, some of the prose was different in style and “meter”, such that it seemed “dictated” to him.

And frankly I am sure the whole book was “dictated” to him. That he was, in fact, as chaplain, the mouthpiece of these women, and his position as Chaplain allowed the viewpoints expressed to be accepted in a way that a work created and made public by women, given what it expresses, would have viewed more critically by readers. Keep in mind that it was written in Latin, and only those who were either Clerics or the nobility could read the thing. What wasn’t literally dictated, was more or less, transcribed thought, and he knew that Marie was final “editor” in the content. And his position, both as Chaplain, and his very livelihood, depending on her being happy with the finished product.

So let me make an analogy, and step just a little bit in time. Things are little muddled today cultural to make a similar one from a very current example.

Consider Hugh Hefner. And consider his show called Playboy After Dark. This was a time of much “friction”, the early 60s. Civil rights and racism are extreme issues. Sexual “freedom” is coming about. The “rights” of just about everyone are much talked about. The setting which was sort of this contrived “salon” from Paris. The set looked like a large living room in a swanky spiffy Playboy bachelor pad. All these “cool”, meaning avante guarde, “open minded”, intellectually superior, artistically superior, liberal people are just hanging out, having a spiffy party. Hef does more for civil rights in a minute than 50 writers do in 10 years by having Sammy Davis Jr on the show. Hef did more for women’s liberation by having a “guest” on the show to talk about it and the camera sees Hef nodding approval, than 50 screeching female professors could ever do.

So then that “cool” boy, that wants to be like Hef, all through the 60s and the 70s, the “cool boy” believes in Equal Rights, Racism, Feminism and this idea of “gender” and “race” being a culturally imposed concept. And that “cool” boy does it exactly because it is “artistically and culturally superior” than the conservative ideas of the time. So then imagine how pervasive both of those viewpoints on Racism and Sexism are today and how “religious” both have become in such a short time, historically. All of us have experienced the reaction of people to our Red Pill beliefs that border on religious arguments. And some of the biggest fighters of what we propose are men. So a philosophy can quickly move from the fringe and become core if the “right” people get behind it and push it.

So then imagine the same thing back in 1200, the “cool” boy, the son of the nobles, that reads latin, has a little bit of education, he thinks the Catholic church is a bunch of sticks in the mud. He is literally built, wired, for sex, to want women. And this idea of “love” makes absolute sense to him, or at least he wants it to make sense, because the top of line, highest status women, those noble women in that area between Barcelona and maybe, Bologna, were all giving approval to those men that bought into it. So by saying “I believe in Love” or “I am in Love’s army”, or “I am a soldier of love”, what he is saying is “I’m cool, man. Please like me.”

And just like today, any guy that goes against Feminism or attacks the behavior of women is shunned. I hurl some attack on women in comments to an article, and some woman comes back with “Oh, I be you just get you tons”. So in 1200, It is “No ‘Love”, then no ‘love’”, you were ostracized by women, at least the cool French Chicks who were the celebs of the day.

And so it takes hold, and as Feminism has co-opted the church, today’s women have imposed their viewpoint on church acceptance of divorce, premarital sex, with the whole idea of the “magic vagina” of women compelling those men into better behavior and better performance, and the woman has the right and the duty to punish him for failure to live up to the love that the woman has given him as a gift that he must continue to earn, the same thing happens with “love”. It co-opts the Catholic church of the day, and throughout the 13th and 14th centuries, “love” creeps into the morality and consciousness of the people at the time. The “love” thing is dominating the “court” and is leaks into the church in the relationship of accomplices that they first and second estate have which each other. It catches on and becomes the dominant aspect of the culture and women are “rehabilited”, seize control, and never let go. They have the “authority” because they have the “morality”, and they drive the course of society by controlling what is “moral” and what is “honorable”. And what constitutes both, from that point forward, are generally what is in the best interest of women, given their situation, given the time.

So why is this important to us?

First, the whole idea of “Courtly Love” was entirely hypergamistic. Entirely. The Capellanus book has as the heart of the second part, 9 dialogues. These dialogues define the Feminine Imperative.

Keep in mind, at this time, there might have been maybe 500 books floating around in total. And this is the only one on this topic available for a 100 years. The only other referenced work before this was Ovid “The Art of Love” and most scholars really see Ovid as more of a satire on the “treatises” written during his day, and not as a REFERENCE MANUAL that people today, including myself (pre-Red Pill) , see it.

I took it as “how to” book. And what it should be titled is “How to be a AFC Beta”. Also keep in mind that books were so rare, that everything thing was relayed as an oral tradition. Even as late at 1513, Luther said he had been a priest for 3 years before he ever even saw a Bible. And that’s the effing bible.

So here you are somewhere in 1200, and this major Noble dude guy, or high status babe, gets up and starts talking or singing about this new “love” thing, and everyone is nodding and agreeing. And if they don’t nod and agree, then they don’t get to be in the group, they’re fired. The High Status women turn on them, and they are ostracized.

So in the 9 dialogues, there are a series of conversations that men of one of three statuses would have with a women of one of the same three statuses. Those statuses being “commoner, noble, high noble”. And these dialogues set the ground work, the rules, of what both men and women of all three classes should, do, feel, and think about “love”. And “love” is only between those classes. Peasants don’t love. They need to stay on the farm and work it. They have no time for “love”. And love is only between people that aren’t married.

And there you go right there, with anachronistic thought. You probably thought, single people. No. Single people weren’t dating and marrying. No way. That was decided by someone else. You were probably going to be part of some arranged marriage. “Love” was between married people, at least married women and a man, but not married to each other. You can already see the way hypergamy is influencing the idea of “love”. Girl gets pawned off as a 14 year old or 15 year old as part of some arrangement between older family members. She probably didn’t like her husband very much, given what we know about women today. And he probably didn’t like her much either. I am sure there were just as many men when they first saw there “betrothed” thought, “Oh fuck, you have got to be shitting me. I have to marry this bitch?”

And in these dialogues, pure hypergamy is enforced and codified. The dialogues enforced class, at least enforced it for men. Men could try and love “up”, but most likely they couldn’t unless they displayed such extreme good character that their character was better than all of the available men in the class of the woman he was “hitting on”. But it also set a nice set of rules for women “move up”. But the women were the ones, in every case, to judge the men, the determine that even though the women were “moving” up, they still were to ones to say “OK, I’ll take you You are worthy of my love”.

And then it also codified acceptance for women to be able to “cheat” on their husbands. “Courtly Love” was only between people that were not married. They got around the 10 commandments, by stipulating that the true lover never asks for sex in return for his love. He loves merely for the purity of his love. And that the whole endeavor was supposed to remain entirely secret. That if it became public, then the “love” was dead. Over. At best he got a kiss, maybe an embrace. Gentlemen in the army of “love” never tell. And Gentlemen never demand sex. Which of course, all of this was bullshit. But since “Courtly Love” was “love” for “love”‘s sake then those husbands couldn’t get jealous, and nobody loves their husband anyway. So it gave a socially acceptable way for this woman that had this beta forced on her by marriage, then get out their and have exposure to the alphas that she truly wanted. And it gave her a social means to circumvent the church. And since everyone, at least everyone who mattered, was married to someone they didn’t like, then it was an early version of “Don’t ask; don’t tell”.

This also forms the basis of monogamy, as we know it, codified by women, in that the definition of it truly benefits women. “The true lover that truly loves only loves the one. He cannot love two. The sight of other women do not affect him because he has true love for his true love.” Notice that there are a lot of “he” and ‘his” words used. The book asserts that those men that would want sex with lots of women and have passion for someone other than “the one” under the guise of love is an an “ass”, mule, dressed up in the finest livery, but still an “ass”.

Schopenhauer said “Love! If you would have thought it up, your fellows would have thought you daft. The mere idea that because a woman allows you her favors, that you should support her for life.”

Well, it was thought up, by these women in the south of France, and it curled around and snaked its way into the current consciousness of people like it was something that people have done since the dawn of men. And it wasn’t.

When you read Capellanus’ statement of what “love” is, it is the seminal definition, the very “jump street”, the Genesis of the codification of “OneItis”. And when you read the dialogues, and then this list of the “Rules of Love” which is the part of the book that is most public, you see the fingerprint of the Feminine Imperative.

http://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/rules_of_love.html

I think at some point in my reading, someone had described Capellanus as being very “Copernican”,as in Copernicus, and astrology, threatening the religion and the concept of the world.

I say we use him again in a Copernican manner, as the very argument that the Feminine Imperative is an entirely contrived ideal.

And we reject “love”, as in the definition of it by Capellanus. We see it as the social manipulation that it was to orchestrate the emotions of men, and actions from those emotions, entirely for the benefit of women.

Churchill said “In England, it is permitted unless it is not permitted. In Germany, it is permitted only if it is permitted. In Russia, it is not permitted even if it is permitted. And in France, it is permitted, even when it is not permitted.”

To some degree that combination of all four “permitteds” describes the Feminine Imperative. It is permitted when they want it to be permitted and not permitted when they do not. Even if it is not permitted then it is permitted, if it is in the benefit of women. And especially, it is not permitted even when it is permitted, in the case where it might benefit men at the expense of women.

They only way to put a brunt on the Feminine Imperative is make them pay a cost for their behavior. And the best way for men to do that is the rejection of “love”.

In the words of YaReally, “The manosphere is the new counter-culture”.

We are the new “cool boys”. We are the new “rebels”.

And you need to read Capellanus, and as you read it, to see the manipulation in the pages. Maybe it was adopted because it had social value to blunt the negative behavior or the men of the time and turn it in a constructive direction.

But today it is only something that is used to provide advantage for women. And that advantage is often used at the expense of men, and furthermore, for the punishment of men, the social shaming of men, when women deem the men’s behavior or actions to be at the detriment of women. And they are allowed to be judge, jury, and executioner of their verdict. And no one ever challenges them.

And we begin by rejecting unilaterally, out of hand, “love” for the pack of lies it is.

So I say we use our position as influence peddlers, taste makers, of our day and time, and shame men, Mangina men, and White Knights as fools; toadies for women and their “love”. And make no mistake, that whole White Knight shit comes exactly from this book. We all should read “Treatise on Love”, deconstruct it, and expose it for the bullshit sham it is.

I have ranted this in the past. It is time for men to gain an entirely new consciousness, a new awareness, a entirely new set of constructivism abstracts on which to frame their thinking.

The constant whine, complaint, criticism of the manosphere is that is attacks “love”, it makes “love” impossible, it kills “love”.

And I say, no it doesn’t. It exposes the reality of the impossibility of “love” because “love” is entirely a manufactured ideal. And modern Feminism has brought about the recognition of the impossibility of it and rubbed it in the face of men. If you pine for it, it you whine about it, the end of it, the lack of it, then you deny the truth of it.

Modern life is entirely developed as a means to blunt the natural advantages that men have. This “love” is a further handicap, a weight on your shoulders, that limits your ability to use your advantage, physically, mentally, by women exploiting the emotional advantage that women have over men. She only has this advantage if you allow her to have it.

So discard it. It is religion in you that does not work to your advantage.

So yes, “They have a right to do anything that we can’t stop them from doing”.

But we have the capacity and the ability to make them pay for it.

In the end, and my life right now is living proof of this, they need us more than we need them. We want them; they need us. And the things that most women want, they get from us. And without the handicap of “love”, you can make them pay, and pay, and pay, until they fucking cry uncle.

Abusive “shrews” and intimate partner violence

November 27, 2013July 9, 2017 / rtbavfm / Leave a comment

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