MGTOW – facts and fallacies

July 14, 2013December 11, 2023 / Peter Wright / 3 Comments

In this article I attempt to define the cultural phenomenon of ‘Men Going Their Own Way’ (MGTOW), a contemporary movement that sees men rejecting traditional relationships with women.

Men’s Human Rights Activists (MHRA’s) have always promoted the MGTOW lifestyle in one form or another, and in many ways the men’s rights movement is synonymous with the intent of MGTOW. So it should come as no surprise that two men from an early men’s rights forum (Ragnar and Meikyo) actively promoted the phrase Men Going Their Own Way.

Ragnar, one of the promoters of the phrase describes the moment as follows:

“You see all the ideas were floating around on the internet. We were frustrated that we couldn’t get men to build an organization, couldn’t get men to come to this damned meeting- everybody was going their own damned way, and the fact that men went their own way, we started to use that phrase and we started to talk about what’s important for men… who’s going to define their masculinity? Well, they actually have to do that themselves, they have to find out what it is for themselves. So, as you have the responsibility for your own actions, well then it’s also your responsibility to define who you are as a man.” Ragnar [1]

More interesting is the growth of ideas that have attached themselves to the concept that make it all but impossible to define what MGTOW is. So that will be the purpose of this article – to locate a single definition compatible with the variety of descriptions being proposed. This can be achieved by applying Occam’s razor to all extraneous ideas and dogmas that have attached themselves to MGTOW – to those pet ideas that have hitched a ride on the core motive so that we end up with a short definition everyone agrees on.

We’ll start here with a small sample of ideas and practices that have attached themselves to the MGTOW concept that can be considered superfluous to a limited definition that is going to suit everyone. Here then are a few of those add-ons to what we will call the core definition of MGTOW:

MHRAs are not MGTOW:
This false claim is easily discounted. According to the core definition of MGTOW (see below) many MHRAs are MGTOW, so any claims that these are opposed orientations doesn’t prove useful for constructing a definition. Some claim that the ‘A’ in MHRA refers to the word activism and so must be about group-based political actions – hence unrelated to men’s individual path to liberation. That argument, however, is based on a false premise, because a Google search reveals that the ‘A’ refers not only to activism but to advocacy, including self-advocacy – at least for the majority who use the acronym. So the argument that MGTOW are working toward a goal opposite that of MHRAs amounts to a false and divisive proposition.

MGTOW is anti ‘traditionalism’:
This widespread and increasingly popular stance in the MGTOW movement was elaborated largely by Paul Elam and Barbarossaaa. Traditionalism refers to traditional gender roles for men and women, roles which most everyone in the MHRM/MGTOW movement reject as destructive to a man’s wellbeing and freedom. However a small percentage of self-described MHRAs/MGTOW do advocate traditional gender roles, especially men in the earlier MRM who were split on this question with perhaps half endorsing traditionalism and half rejecting it.

Those advocating traditional gender roles claim men can enjoy significant freedom by stipulating what they are willing to accept as a viable and fair ‘role-division’ in relationships with women – a claim that can be demonstrated, they say, by a study of traditional males who embodied Sinatra’s song “I Did It My Way.” Whatever freedom these men pretend to enjoy they are still laboring within that narrow and self-limiting paradigm that requires male utility in exchange for a woman’s charms, which means he continues to live the ‘gynocentric way’ even if he feels he is doing it “his way.” The man must continue to labor outside the home and bring home the bacon, while his wife occupies herself as a homemaker. In terms of logical categories it’s obvious that traditionalism and radical male autonomy are mutually exclusive, meaning that if traditionalists want a full taste of freedom they must, by definition, look for it outside of the traditionalist template.

Since the invention of ‘romantic chivalry’ in the Middle Ages (and not before), MGTOW men became an exception to the new rule, and those who continued to practice it were held in suspicion, shamed and rejected by society. The new gynocentric mandates viewed free men as recalcitrant, and from that moment in history society would no longer tolerate any man opting out of his gynocentric “duty” toward women. So I find myself in full agreement with Paul Elam and Barbarossaaa that traditionalism constitutes the antithesis of any coherent definition of MGTOW, a fact so blatant it can be considered implicit in the definition without the need state it.

Veto-MGTOW:
For some men MGTOW is demonstrated exclusively by veto power. Veto constitutes a narrow philosophical practice of negating things, which is nevertheless a perfectly acceptable expression of MGTOW. However some MGTOW tend to specialise in veto alone and have no other tool in their toolbox. About veto:

‘This singular kind of power demonstrates agency dedicated wholly to negation. Its sole strength lies in its ability to frustrate the will of others… its power is wholly prohibitive, as the word originates from the Latin meaning: “I forbid”.’ [2]

Stating what you don’t accept (veto) is a simple task compared with figuring out and articulating what you do want for your life. Living the MGTOW lifestyle usually includes a mixture of positive aspiration – such as figuring out the kind of friendships you might want to cultivate, or the career or hobby you might want to pursue – and is not limited merely to “I don’t want this, and I don’t believe that”. Veto-MGTOW naturally falls well short of a universal law for MGTOW.

MGTOW is anti-relationships with women:
The ‘no relationships’ position is supported by a small but vocal minority of the MGTOW community, and particularly by the veto-MGTOW contingent. Conversely, many MGTOW develop positive criteria for cultivating relationships with women on the basis of friendship or other relationships that may or may not include sexual relations depending on preference. For instance, in his recent discussion with Dean Esmay, Barbarossaaa –a respected MGTOW advocate- indicated that he engages in sexual friendships with women that include going out to dinner and other fun activities. The guiding principle for these men is that relations with women are workable if they can be based on creative agreements outside the usual gynocentric criteria, and can be backed with a determination to reject groupthink and societal pressure to conform to the typical male role.

Briffault’s law:
The 19th Century Marxist thinker Robert Briffault is remembered for this comment; “The female, not the male, determines all the conditions of the animal family. Where the female can derive no benefit from association with the male, no such association takes place.” This generalization has since been spun out and declared a “law” by some, though Briffault never proposed it as a law. Since it was first coined, others have added addendums and corollaries to this “law” which amount to little more than personal and unscientific opinions. Further, despite the current attempt in MGTOW blogger circles to revive this “law,” a review of the scientific literature shows no support nor even a reference to “Briffault’s Law” – nor is it mentioned in Google Scholar, not once. If anyone can find any academic sources that take this “law” seriously I would welcome a list of citations and will happily update this article to reflect them if provided.

A careful look at Briffault’s “Law” shows it to be two independent statements, with the second arguably more factual than the first. However both statements are too generalized to be useful as a law; yes it often happens that women can be controlling and, for example, may turn out not to like their man’s friends (because women derive no benefit from the association) and so drive them out, but men do this too, and both sexes are hardly 100% successful in doing so. In the latter cases we are talking about highly pathological behaviors in which case Briffault’s Law might better be characterized as “Briffault’s generalization about dysfunctional relationships.”

The implication of this “law” for men going their own way is that, because women supposedly dictate all relationship moves, the male is better off opting out of that power imbalance. Relationships are simply a bad deal. Understandably this assumption of a biology-based female omnipotence is not something universally subscribed to by the MGTOW community and therefore cannot be considered a basis for an agreed definition.

Male mother love:
This idea suggests that men’s relationship aspirations are driven by an unconscious yearning for “mother” love, from which all MGTOW men should attempt to liberate themselves. Oedipus complex, anyone? Whatever the real influence of “mother” love this presents a historically tired argument for male motivation. It is one that no longer appears in the practice of psychology and for good reason; over 100 years of analysis have proven the theory of less value than first suspected, and the man who first theorized it as a “universal complex” is thought to have suffered the complex himself. Behaviorism, psychoanalysis and the long reign of the Oedipus complex have been superseded by contemporary attachment theory which has deepened our understanding and shown that male need for attachment and affection need not be linked to that word “mother”.

None of this is to dismiss the pivotal importance of attachment desire in males, and there is much in the so-called “mother love” theory that warrants close and ongoing discussion. In fact the science of attachment is potentially one of the most fruitful paths of investigation for MGTOW there is. The issue here is that whilst promising, the discussion about adult attachment theory in relation to MGTOW is currently underdeveloped and is therefore of limited use as a theoretical base.

Female hypergamy:
This popular theory holds that when it comes to the mating game females can’t resist “trading up” and therefore make unreliable mates for the long-term; it is better for men to avoid relationships with women and go their own way. A decisive piece of data confirming the practice of female hypergamy comes from a talk by Roy F. Baumeister who says that “maybe 80% of the women but only 40% of men reproduced” throughout the history of the human race. However according to follow-up research Baumeister’s “maybe” turned out to be incorrect and the numbers have been superseded by more recent science.

The estimates on historic male/female population sizes are based on The Most Recent Common Ancestor for both males and females. At the time Baumeister’s address where he publicized the ‘findings’ that 2 women reproduced for every 1 man, TMRCA for males was between 50-100 thousand years ago, and the TMRCA for females was 200,000 years ago; leading to a 2 to 1 split favouring female ancestors. Revised genetic studies have found that TMRCA for males is ~142,000 thousand years ago and the TMRCA for females is ~177,000 years ago. This means that Baumeister’s conclusion is void. There is a slight skew towards female ancestors but this may be accounted for by female exogamy and the fact that female generations are shorter than male (women have children earlier then men do). It may also be an artifact of our current level of knowledge into the matter and as our science is refined, the numbers converge.

With the revised figures the importance of the female hypergamy to MGTOW is also revised; we now see a less extreme a picture than the earlier Baumeister figures painted and, one would assume, a somewhat less relevant ideological motivation for MGTOW.

Biological reductionism:
Men are viewed by some MGTOW as eternally groveling trilobites who will not change; they are merely nerve reactions to environmental stimuli with the ultimate aim of sexual reproduction with women.

The typical biological reductionist spends 99% of his conversation promoting human behavior as biologically determined, while meagerly acknowledging (if at all) the role culture plays in inhibiting or encouraging the release of our biological urges. Despite a reluctance to recognize it, cultural control of biology is an undeniable fact; and when a person’s behaviour transgresses a social taboo, the transgressing individual stands a high chance of being incarcerated or killed by edict of the body politic. For instance if hypergamous behavior by women is subject to a taboo in a given culture, then if she transgresses it she may be (literally) stoned to death: score zero for the selfish-gene, and one for culture. Such punishment of “anomalous” behavior sends a message to others about how much of their biological compulsions will be tolerated, and people’s behavior is adjusted to that threat accordingly. Conversely is it not true that some cultures encourage freedom of biological expression more than others? The point of these examples is that cultural dictates –and their wide fluctuations over time– provide the more powerful factor in determining the inhibition or release of biological imperatives.

We need to be wary, then, of those who would explain human behavior as constistent and relatively changeless over long swathes of time and regardless of cultural contexts. This angle is strongly promoted by MGTOW advocate Stardusk whose primary hypothesis goes like this:

“This has been going on for millennia if not millions of years- men have always kowtowed and adhered to the desires of women, and have always been what women wanted them to be. Men have always subordinated their desire for freedom to their desire to reproduce.” [3]

Stardusk further claims that men (one assumes, aside from himself) will never change from their unconscious kowtowing ways. Not only does this hypothesis ignore the wild fluctuations in culture that saw, for example, men of classical times behave much more freely in relation to women than they did, say, in the Middle Ages, it also promotes a reductionist and patently misandric hypotheses about men that is unlikely to gain traction as an explanatory basis for MGTOW.

***

Any of these topics can serve legitimate interests for MGTOW; but the question arises of what binds these disparate ideas together? In order to find a definition of MGTOW we must find a degree of general consensus, some shared factor among the variety of perspectives, or otherwise MGTOW will end up talking about entirely different things. And if there were no common consensus here we would merely have debaters talking about different subjects; one would be talking about female hypergamy and the other would be talking about celibacy with no common ground between them.

So we will need a universally applicable definition that will fit everyone’s criteria for what MGTOW is in spite of the different perspectives that different people hold on its nature. This definition must be a limited one since it can encompass only those parts of MGTOW which all broader definitions hold in common. For this essay the definition is this: Male self-determination.

That, then, is what everybody who discusses MGTOW holds in common regarding the concept. Note in this definition there is no reference to the disputed ideas or practices listed above. Some might insist on including those ideas in the base definition – to piggyback it with a whole range of idiosyncratic concepts – but that is of no use here, for beyond this narrow definition people basically disagree with each other. To be as objective as possible, then, we must take only that which everybody agrees upon as the universally applicable definition.

Self-determination refers simply to the human right to determine the course of one’s life, and to apply self-advocacy in that direction. And let’s not forget that the ‘A’ in MHRA refers to precisely the same advocacy. Self-determination and self-advocacy were always there for men who chose it long before the MGTOW acronym provided another way to say it. We can also state that implicit in this definition is opposition to, and rejection of gynocentrism as being the antithesis of male self-determination. Men who subscribe to gynocentric directives, such as profeminist men, are subscribing to ‘other-determination,’ or ‘determination of self by other’ and need not apply for MGTOW status.

This article does three things. It carves away superfluous ideas from a core definition of MGTOW; it offers a concise definition of MGTOW; and it takes back MGTOW from those who would cleave it from its synonymy with the Men’s Human Rights Movement.

AVfM has churned out hundreds of articles promoting self-determination for men, and it has done so more vigorously than it has commentaries and articles calling for specific political activism. If one wants to soak themselves in a MGTOW atmosphere they need go no further than this high quality MGTOW community that showcases articles and interviews on every aspect of the subject.

A further development worth mentioning is the notion of Women Going Their Own Way (WGTOW). While the persecution of men by gynocentric culture is unique, there exist solid albeit different reasons for women to reject it, including the infantilizing dogma and gender bigotry it pressures women to adopt. The uncommon woman who chooses to renounce gynocentrism in favor of a different path deserves the ‘going their own way’ title announcing self-determination. As long as women use the ‘W’ I take no offence to WGTOW. In fact I applaud it as another slap in the face for gynocentrism.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoXQf2f2Yxo&w=560&h=315]

SOURCES

[1] Dialogue with MGTOW Founders (2012)
[2] Hillman, J., Veto, chapter in ‘Kinds of Power’ p.196, (1995)
[3] Stardusk On the Men in the Matrix
[4] Elam, Paul., A Voice for Men
[5] Barbarossaaa, YouTube Channel
[6] Davison, Diana., Women Going Her Own Way
[7] Esmay, Dean., Youtube Channel
[8] AVfM Wiki Glossary of terms: MGTOW

[9] References for Hypergamy section:
? Is There Anything Good About Men?
? Genetic Evidence for Unequal Population Sizes of Human Females and Males
? A revised root for the human Y chromosomal phylogenetic tree
? “Copernican” Reassessment of the Human Mitochondrial DNA Tree
? Estimators of human effective sex ratio detect sex biases on different timescales

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About gynocentrism

July 14, 2013March 24, 2025 / gynocentrism / Leave a comment

Gynocentrism (n.) refers to a dominant focus on women’s needs and wants relative to men’s needs and wants. This can happen in the context of cultural conventions, institutional policies, and in gendered relationships.¹
[see here for more dictionary definitions of gynocentrism]

Introduction

Cultural gynocentrism arose in Medieval Europe during a period cross-cultural influences and momentous changes in gendered customs. Beginning in the 11th century, European society birthed an intersection of Arabic poetry, aristocratic courting trends, the Marian cult, and later the imperial patronage of Eleanor of Aquitaine and her daughter Marie who reimagined chivalry as a way to service ladies – a practice now referred to as courtly love.

Courtly love was enacted by minstrels, playrights, troubadours and hired romance-writers who laid down a model of romantic fiction that is still the biggest grossing genre of literature today. That confluence of factors generated the conventions that continue to drive gynocentric practices to the present.

Gynocentrism as a cultural phenomenon

The primary elements of gynocentric culture, as we experience it today, are derived from practices originating in medieval society such as feudalism, chivalry and courtly love that continue to inform contemporary society in subtle ways. Such gynocentric patters constitute a “sexual feudalism,” as attested by female writers like Lucrezia Marinella who in 1600 AD recounted that women of lower socioeconomic classes were treated as superiors by men who acted as servants or beasts born to serve them, or by Modesta Pozzo who in 1590 wrote;

“don’t we see that men’s rightful task is to go out to work and wear themselves out trying to accumulate wealth, as though they were our factors or stewards, so that we can remain at home like the lady of the house directing their work and enjoying the profit of their labors? That, if you like, is the reason why men are naturally stronger and more robust than us — they need to be, so they can put up with the hard labor they must endure in our service.”²

The golden casket at the head of this page depicting scenes of servile behaviour toward women were typical of courtly love culture of the Middle Ages. Such objects were given to women as gifts by men seeking to impress. Note the woman standing with hands on hips in a position of authority, and the man being led around by a neck halter, his hands clasped in a position of subservience.

It’s clear that much of what we today call gynocentrism was invented in this early period, where the feudal template was employed as the basis for a new model for love in which men would play the role of a vassal to women who assumed the role of an idealized Lord.

C.S. Lewis, in the middle of the 20th Century, referred to this historical revolution as “the feudalisation of love,” and stated that it has left no corner of our ethics, our imagination, or our daily life untouched. “Compared with this revolution,” states Lewis, “the Renaissance is a mere ripple on the surface of literature.”³ Lewis further states;

“Everyone has heard of courtly love, and everyone knows it appeared quite suddenly at the end of the eleventh century at Languedoc. The sentiment, of course, is love, but love of a highly specialized sort, whose characteristics may be enumerated as Humility, Courtesy, and the Religion of Love. The lover is always abject. Obedience to his lady’s lightest wish, however whimsical, and silent acquiescence in her rebukes, however unjust, are the only virtues he dares to claim. Here is a service of love closely modelled on the service which a feudal vassal owes to his lord. The lover is the lady’s ‘man’. He addresses her as midons, which etymologically represents not ‘my lady’ but ‘my lord’. The whole attitude has been rightly described as ‘a feudalisation of love’. This solemn amatory ritual is felt to be part and parcel of the courtly life.” ⁴

With the advent of (initially courtly) women being elevated to the position of ‘Lord’ in intimate relationships, and with this general sentiment diffusing to the masses and across much of the world today, we are justified in talking of a gynocentric cultural complex that affects, among other things, relationships between men and women. Further, unless evidence of widespread gynocentric culture can be found prior to the Middle Ages, then gynocentrism is approximately 1000 years old. In order to determine if this thesis is valid we need to look further at what we mean by “gynocentrism”.

The term gynocentrism has been in circulation since the 1800’s, with the general definition being “focused on women; concerned with only women.”⁵ From this definition we see that gynocentrism could refer to any female-centered practice, or to a single gynocentric act carried out by one individual. There is nothing inherently wrong with a gynocentric act (eg. celebrating Mother’s Day) , or for that matter an androcentric act (celebrating Father’s Day). However when a given act becomes instituted in the culture to the exclusion of other acts we are then dealing with a hegemonic custom — i.e. such is the relationship custom of elevating women to the position of men’s social, moral or spiritual superiors.

Author of Gynocentrism Theory Adam Kostakis has attempted to expand the definition of gynocentrism to refer to “male sacrifice for the benefit of women” and “the deference of men to women,” and he concludes; “Gynocentrism, whether it went by the name honor, nobility, chivalry, or feminism, its essence has gone unchanged. It remains a peculiarly male duty to help the women onto the lifeboats, while the men themselves face a certain and icy death.”⁶

While we can agree with Kostakis’ descriptions of assumed male duty, the phrase gynocentric culture more accurately carries his intention than gynocentrism alone. Thus when used alone in the context of this website gynocentrism refers to part or all of gynocentric culture, which is defined here as any culture instituting rules for gender relationships that benefit females at the expense of males across a broad range of measures.

At the base of gynocentric culture lies the practice of enforced male sacrifice for the benefit of women. If we accept this definition we must look back and ask whether male sacrifices throughout history were always made for the sake women, or alternatively for the sake of some other primary goal? For instance, when men went to die in vast numbers in wars, was it for women, or was it rather for Man, King, God and Country? If the latter we cannot then claim that this was a result of some intentional gynocentric culture, at least not in the way I have defined it here. If the sacrifice isn’t intended directly for the benefit women, even if women were occasional beneficiaries of male sacrifice, then we are not dealing with gynocentric culture.

Male utility and disposability strictly “for the benefit of women” comes in strongly only after the advent of the 12th century gender revolution in Europe – a revolution that delivered us terms like gallantry, chivalry, chivalric love, courtesy, damsels, romance and so on. From that period onward gynocentric practices grew exponentially, culminating in the demands of today’s feminist movement. In sum, gynocentrism (ie. gynocentric culture) was a patchy phenomenon at best before the middle ages, after which it became ubiquitous.

With this in mind it makes little sense to talk of gynocentric culture starting with the industrial revolution a mere 200 years ago (or 100 or even 30 yrs ago), or of it being two million years old as some would argue. We are not only fighting two million years of genetic programming; our culturally constructed problem of gender inequity is much simpler to pinpoint and to potentially reverse. All we need do is look at the circumstances under which gynocentric culture first began to flourish and attempt to reverse those circumstances. Specifically, that means rejecting the illusions of romantic love (feudalised love), along with the practices of misandry, male shaming and servitude that ultimately support it.

La Querelle des Femmes, and advocacy for women

The Querelle des Femmes translates as the “quarrel about women” and amounts to what we might today call a gender-war. The querelle had its beginning in twelfth century Europe and finds its culmination in the feminist-driven ideology of today (though some authors claim, unconvincingly, that the querelle came to an end in the 1700s).

The basic theme of the centuries-long quarrel revolved, and continues to revolve, around advocacy for the rights, power and status of women, and thus Querelle des Femmes serves as the originating title for gynocentric discourse.

To place the above events into a coherent timeline, chivalric servitude toward women was elaborated and given patronage first under the reign of Eleanor of Aquitaine (1137-1152) and instituted culturally throughout Europe over the subsequent 200 year period. After becoming thus entrenched on European soil there arose the Querelle des Femmes which refers to the advocacy culture that arose for protecting, perpetuating and increasing female power in relation to men that continues, in an unbroken tradition, in the efforts of contemporary feminism.⁷

Writings from the Middle Ages forward are full of testaments about men attempting to adapt to the feudalisation of love and the serving of women, along with the emotional agony, shame and sometimes physical violence they suffered in the process. Gynocentric chivalry and the associated querelle have not received much elaboration in men’s studies courses to-date, but with the emergence of new manuscripts and quality English translations it may be profitable to begin blazing this trail.⁸

References

1. Wright, P., What’s in a suffix? taking a closer look at the word gyno–centrism
2. Modesta Pozzo, The Worth of Women: their Nobility and Superiority to Men
3. C.S. Lewis, Friendship, chapter in The Four Loves, HarperCollins, 1960
4. C.S. Lewis, The Allegory of Love, Oxford University Press, 1936
5. Dictionary.com – Gynocentric
6. Adam Kostakis, Gynocentrism Theory – (Published online, 2011). Although Kostakis assumes gynocentrism has been around throughout recorded history, he singles out the Middle Ages for comment: “There is an enormous amount of continuity between the chivalric class code which arose in the Middle Ages and modern feminism… One could say that they are the same entity, which now exists in a more mature form – certainly, we are not dealing with two separate creatures.”
7. Joan Kelly, Early Feminist Theory and the Querelle des Femmes (1982), reprinted in Women, History and Theory, UCP (1984)
8. The New Male Studies Journal has published thoughtful articles touching on the history and influence of chivalry in the lives of males.

Love and friendship

July 14, 2013August 5, 2023 / Peter Wright / 5 Comments

“It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.”
Friedrich Nietzsche

Modern culture promotes a neurotic vision of what constitutes true love. In the 12th century courtly love served as the basis for a new relationship model in which men were encouraged to play the role of chivalric vassal to women who assumed the role of an idealized Lady.

C.S. Lewis, back in the middle of the 20th Century, referred to this historical revolution as “the feudalisation of love,” and stated that it has left no corner of our ethics, our imagination, or our daily life untouched. “Compared with this revolution,” states Lewis, “the Renaissance is a mere ripple on the surface of literature.” [1]

Not only has this feudalistic notion of love permeated almost every corner of the globe today, it continues to be vigorously promoted by both feminists and traditionalists alike. The love we are referring to is what Hollywood, romance novels, and other media refer to as “romantic love,” the fantasy to which every modern man and woman pledges blind obeisance. Here are two descriptions of romantic love from modern scholars:

C.S. Lewis:

“Everyone has heard of courtly love, and everyone knows it appeared quite suddenly at the end of the eleventh century at Languedoc. The sentiment, of course, is love, but love of a highly specialized sort, whose characteristics may be enumerated as Humility, Courtesy, and the Religion of Love. The lover is always abject. Obedience to his lady’s lightest wish, however whimsical, and silent acquiescence in her rebukes, however unjust, are the only virtues he dares to claim. Here is a service of love closely modelled on the service which a feudal vassal owes to his lord. The lover is the lady’s ‘man’. He addresses her as midons, which etymologically represents not ‘my lady’ but ‘my lord’. The whole attitude has been rightly described as ‘a feudalisation of love’. This solemn amatory ritual is felt to be part and parcel of the courtly life.”[2]

C.S. Lewis wrote that many decades ago; I’m not sure “everyone” knows it today. We ought to remember his words, because in the long sweep of human history, what we think has been with us forever is something people only a few generations ago knew to be mostly an artificial, idealized notion.

Slavoj Zizek:

“The knight’s relationship to the Lady is thus the relationship of the subject-bondsman, the vassal, to his feudal Master-Sovereign who subjects him to senseless, outrageous, impossible, arbitrary, capricious ordeals. It is precisely in order to emphasize the non-spiritual nature of these ordeals that Lacan quotes a poem about a Lady who demanded that her servant literally lick her arse: the poem consists of the poet’s complaints about the bad smells that await him down there (one knows the sad state of personal hygiene in the Middle Ages), and about the imminent danger that, as he is fulfilling his ‘duty’, the Lady will urinate on his head.” [3]

Feminism’s mission today is largely the promulgation of this “love,” and it is right that men and women learn to reject it, as Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW), Women Against Feminism (WAF), and Men’s Human Rights Advocates (MHRAs) are doing. It is a “love” that dehumanizes males by turning them into masochistic servants, while simultaneously dehumanizing women by idealizing them to the extent that their humanity is obliterated and replaced with an image of divinity. It’s a recipe for disaster on both sides; the occasional lucky couple for whom this works is about as rare as a lightning strike, with no evidence that even that lucky few are really happier or more productive than anyone else.

When I consider this disastrous state of affairs that has lead men to boycott relationships, a few questions arise; are we being too rash in our rush from love, and if yes is there a better model, a new model, or perhaps an older model for relationships that we have forgot?

The field of attachment science concludes that an absence of close and consistent human attachment causes children to literally wither and die, refusing to thrive despite being provided with clothing, food and an adequate number of toys. Likewise adults literally commit suicide to escape feelings of isolation and loneliness, especially after a relationship separation. Even if we don’t end up suiciding from loneliness we have to ask ourselves if the absence of an intimate relationship in our lives leaves us limping, or somehow unfulfilled? Some would suggest we can fill our intimacy void with friendships, but this leads to a further question of whether there is an adequate formulation of friendship that can satisfy our needs – a relationship that doesn’t rely on the usual vassal and lord model at the core of romantic love.

In ancient cultures friendship was a more lofty aspiration than it is today. It was synonymous with love and it often involved sexual intimacy. In Ancient Greek, the same word was used for friend and lover. In our culture we have succeeded in separating friendship from the category we call love, and excised all trace of sex from friendships. Today when we say, “They are just good friends” or “she’s only a friend” we are indicating the absence of both intimate love and sex.

According to the American Heritage Dictionary:

‘A friend is a lover, literally. The relationship between Latin amicus “friend” and amo “I love” is clear, as is the relationship between Greek philos “friend” and phileo, “I love.” In English, though, we have to go back a millennium before we see the verb related to friend. At that time, freond, the Old English word for “friend,” was simply the present participle of the verb freon, “to love.” The Germanic root behind this verb is fri, “to like, love, be friendly to.” (2006)

To older classical cultures, friendship seemed the happiest and most fully human of the different kinds of loves, and for that reason I wonder whether it’s worth reintroducing it here as a guide to relationships between red-pill men and women?

Suppose that rather than running from intimacy we were to demote our idea of “romantic” love from its pedestal, and elevate friendship-love in its place. Suppose also that we steal back sexual attraction and sexual intercourse from the neurotic clutches of “romantic” love, and allow it once again to be part and parcel of friendship if and when relationships call for it.

Before we consider elevating friendship as a replacement for romantic love we need first to detail precisely what it is and how it looks in lived experience, and to that end here are three salient points of definition.

Friendship is based on shared interests
Friendship is based entirely on things people have in common, like some shared insight, interest or taste. It might be cooking, sport, religion, politics, sex, or gardening, and in the best friendships there occurs a handsome combination of these. No friendship can arise without shared interests, because there would be nothing for the friendship to be about. Furthermore, that “something” is generally located outside oneself and one’s relationship – at the football stadium, church, chess-board, or stamp collection. Friendship differs in this respect markedly from “romantic” love in which couples perpetually focus on each other and talk to each other about their love.

Friends hardly ever talk about their friendship. C.S. Lewis captures this with his remark that friends stand side-by-side rather than face-to-face:

“Friends are not primarily absorbed in each other. It is when we are doing things together that friendship springs up – painting, sailing ships, praying, philosophizing, fighting shoulder to shoulder. Friends look in the same direction. Lovers look at each other – that is, in opposite directions.”[1]

This kind of friendship, this love, is not something we can have with anyone we meet. We can no more choose in advance who we are going to be close friends with than we can choose what sort of skin colour we are going to be born with. Friendship arises organically when we discover that a previously casual acquaintance, or perhaps a new person we meet, shares significant interests with us; “What? You too? I thought I was the only one!” The pleasure derived from cooperation in that shared interest, and of getting to know them through that activity, provides an avenue for deep bonding and human attachment.

Friendship is based in personal authenticity
Friendship is based on true identities and interests, not on some narrow and dehumanising role we might play. Friendship invites you to speak out about your interests in order to find potential areas of commonality. This is not allowed in so-called “romantic” love lest your interests threaten the narrow feudalistic fantasy. In “romantic” love the main “shared interest” is that script which insists the man play the role of masochistic utility, and the woman an idealised goddess. It is an objectification of both parties.

Friendship is not based on the feudal model: not vassals and overlords, but partners in crime.

Friendship is highly compatible with sex
Sex does not belong to romantic love – it belongs anywhere you want it to belong. Modern culture has begrudgingly allowed for this possibility under the risqué concept of “friends with benefits,” but to the ancients it was not daring at all, it was perfectly normal. Friendship also allows for a kind of quasi-romance–or dare I say, a possibly more authentic romance? Have you not had a good friend give you a gift, take you out for a meal, or to the movies? Sex and romantic gestures need not remain colonised by feudalistic notions of romantic love alone.

Sexual attraction and desire also need to be put in their place. They may generate some chemistry and may be the first thing that attracts you to a person, but like the shiny trinket that catches your eye at the shopping mall, you will first stare at it in wonder, maybe have a feel, and then decide whether you really want to take that thing home and share your life with it. Friendship is much the same, and if a person you meet has little in common you will be inclined to leave them on the shelf and move on, despite their sexual attractiveness.

________

Romantic-love and friendship-love are clearly opposed relationships with opposing motives. A woman might say: “I don’t want to be friends with my husband because it will take all the drama and intensity out of our marriage.” That is true enough, friendship does take some of the neurotic drama and intensity out of a relationship. But it also takes away the masochism and narcissism, and replaces that sickness with something human and real.

One of the worst-kept secrets about married couples is that they often treat their friends with more kindness, compassion and generosity than they ever do for each other. When best friends are together they are charming, engaging, helpful and courteous, but when they return home to their spouses they appear resentful, angry and uncooperative with each other. Hardly ever do we see this pattern reversed, where people are horrible to friends and at their best with their long term romantic love partners.

Friendship-love not only existed throughout the world before “romantic” love was invented, but it remains active in some pockets of culture today – for instance in China and India. Author Robert Johnson, for instance, writes about the presence of friendship between couples in India, recounting a Hindu marriage rite in which the bride and groom make the solemn but hopeful statement, “You will be my best friend.”

Johnson goes further, telling that “In a traditional Hindu marriage, a man’s commitment to his wife does not depend on his staying ‘in love’ with her. Since he was never ‘in love’ in the first place, there is no way he can fall ‘out of love’. His relationship to his wife is based on loving her, not on being ‘in love’ with the ideal he projects onto her. His relationship is not going to collapse because one day he falls ‘out of love,’ or because he meets another woman who catches his projection. He is committed to a woman and a family, not to a projection.” [4]

Friendship-love appeared long before “romantic” love and it worked. The “romantic” version of love is full of narcissism, corruption, entitlement and despair, where dreams collapse and lives are shattered. On the other hand go ask the happily married octogenarian couple who their best friend is – they will look at each other and smile knowing the answer has been beside them for sixty years. Our lives, loves and families fare much better when we base them on this very human kind of love called friendship.

With freindship, men and women have an opportunity to truly go their own way while keeping the option of healthy intimate relationships with either sex alive. Having your cake and eating it too. That would be my suggestion of how we might cure the malaise.

I once again note that the breakdown in relations between men and women has been painful, and men have suffered the most in this I would think; in the current socio-political climate, marriage and even cohabitation is like jumping out of an aeroplane with a chute you’re not even sure is going to open. And all change can’t simply be political. Still, if we are ever to look forward to a cultural change that might make for a new era of improved relations between the sexes, ditching these feudalistic attitudes about “romantic love,” and restoring the ancient tradition of seeing intimate friendship being the highest ideal for a relationship, would probably by a major step in the right direction culturally. This will require a shift in the attitudes of men and women alike, but the evidence for this being possible is strong; we’ve done it before, and we still see it in some cultures today. It’s not impossible for human beings to think and act this way. So can we return to a culture where that’s the more normal way of thinking? I’d like to believe that possible for us today, or at least in the future.

References

[1] C.S. Lewis, Friendship, chapter in The Four Loves, HarperCollins, 1960
[2] C.S. Lewis, The Allegory of Love, Oxford University Press, 1936
[3] Slavoj Zizek, The Metastases of Enjoyment, Verso Press, 2005
[4] Robert A. Johnson, Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love, HarperCollins, 1983
[5] Robert C. Solomon, Love: Emotion, Metaphor, Empathy, Prometheus Books, 1990
[6] Marcus Tullius Cicero, Cicero’s Essays on Old Age and Friendship, Translation Publishers, 1926
[7] Lorraine S. Pangle, Aristotle and the Philosophy of Friendship, Cambridge University Press, 1986
[8] Irving Singer, The Nature of Love: Plato to Luther, University of Chicago Press, 1966
[9] Irving Singer, The Nature of Love: Courtly and Romantic, MIT Press, 2009
[10] Alan Soble, Eros, Agape and Philia: Readings in the Philosophy of Love, Paragon House, 1998

The birth of chivalric love

March 25, 2013March 3, 2024 / Peter Wright / 8 Comments

Love and war have always been opposed, as we see in our usual phrase ‘make love not war’ or in the rhetoric of pro and anti-war camps. That the two are mutually exclusive is obvious enough. However, in twelfth century Europe something peculiar happened that ushered in a melding of these two contrary principles. Here the military code of chivalry was mated with the fancies of courtly love to produce a bastard child which we will here call chivalric love (today we simply label it ‘chivalry’). Prior to this time chivalry always referred to the military code of behaviour –one that varied from country to country– but one which had absolutely nothing to do with romantic love.

What method did twelfth century society use to bring this about? In a word, shaming.

The medieval aristocracy began to ramp up the practice of shaming by choosing the worst behaviours of the most unruly males and extrapolating those behaviours to the entire gender. Sound familiar? Knights were particularly singled out –much like today’s sporting heroes who display some kind of faux pas– to be used as examples of bad male behaviour requiring the remedy of sweeping cultural reform.

During this time of (supposedly) unruly males, uneducated squires were said to ride mangy horses into mess halls, and rude young men diverted eyes from psalters in the very midst of mass. Among the knights and in the atmosphere of tournaments occasional brawls with grisly incidents occurred – a cracked skull, a gouged eye – as the betting progressed and the dice flew. Male attention to clothing and fashion was said to be appalling, with men happy to go about in sheep and fox skins instead of clothes fashioned of rich and precious stuffs, in colours to better suit them in the company of ladies. And perhaps worst of all were their lack of refinement and manners toward women which was considered offensive.

How and by whom was this unruly gender going to be reformed? One of the first solutions was posed by a French Countess named Marie. According to historian Amy Kelly, with her male reforming ideas;

“Marie organized the rabble of soldiers, fighting-cocks, jousters, springers, riding masters, troubadours, Poitevin nobles and debutantes, young chatelaines, adolescent princes, and infant princesses in the great hall of Poitiers. Of this pandemonium the countess fashioned a seemly and elegant society, the fame of which spread to the world. Here was a woman’s assize to draw men from the excitements of the tilt and the hunt, from dice and games, to feminine society, an assize to outlaw boorishness and compel the tribute of adulation to female majesty.”¹

Countess Marie was one among a long line of reformers to help usher in a gynocentrism whose aim was to convince men of their shared flaws –essentially to shame them- and to prescribe romantic love and concomitant worship of females as the remedy. Via this program romantic love was welded onto the military code and introduced as a way to tame men’s rowdiness and brutality, something today’s traditionalists agree with in their call for men to adhere to these same male roles established first in medieval Europe. One of today’s authorities on this period describes the training of knights in her observation, “The rise of courtly love and its intersection with chivalry in the West are both events of the twelfth century. The idea that love is ennobling and necessary for the education of a knight comes out of the lyrics of this period, but also in the romances of knighthood. Here the truest lovers are now the best knights.”²

With romantic love firmly established within the chivalric code we begin to see the romantic behaviours of soldiers so familiar to us today; going to fight and die for his Lady, love letters from the front lines, a crumpled photo of his sweetheart in a uniform pocket. Rather than for man, king and country it is his love for “her” that now drives a man’s military sacrifice. This is also the reason why today’s movies portraying warzones and carnage always include a hero and his Lady/Damsel pausing for a passionate tongue kiss while the bombs explode around them, as if to suggest that all this carnage is for the sake of her and romantic love. Once accepted into the chivalric canon various love “rules” were enforced with military might –by white knights as we call them- and the resulting culture has been unstoppable. To try and stop it brings the wrath of all those white knights who will bury your ass into the ground for breaking this new military “goal” of romantic love.

Prior to the Middle Ages romantic love was usually considered with suspicion and even viewed as a sign of mental instability requiring removal from the source of trouble and perhaps a medical solution. In the context of universally arranged marriages, romantic love, if it was indulged at all, was done so in a discreet and often underground way without the sanction of polite society. This was the situation worldwide until the advent of the European revolution.

The cult of chivalric love took root first among the aristocratic classes and soon after reached the common classes through literature and storytelling. Romance literature in particular. Having germinated initially in Germany and France in the twelfth centuries, the cult spread on the wings of a burgeoning book production industry that would bring the gynocentric revolution to the entire European continent.

When one considers the subjects in these books – Lancelot and Guinevere, Tristan and Isolde, heroic male deeds for women, love scandals, courtship, upper-class weddings, adultery, and status – we are reminded immediately of today’s women’s magazines that spill out of the magazine racks of shops and waiting rooms.

Women’s magazines and the omnipresent romance novel –and women’s gluttony for them- can be traced back to this early period in which the term romance was actually coined. According to Jennifer Wollock, a professor of Literature at Texas University, such literature had a substantial female readership along with mothers reading to their daughters. Wollock states that the continuing popularity of chivalric love stories is also confirmed by the provenance of romance manuscripts and contents of women’s libraries of the late Middle Ages.²

The three behaviors of chivalric love-code

Keeping with the male side of the equation, the main behaviors prescribed by the code of chivalric love are the doing of romantic deeds, gallantry and vassalage.

Prior to its redeployment in romantic relationships gallantry referred to any courageous behaviour, especially in battle. The word can still mean that. However, under the rules of chivalric love it became, according to the Google dictionary definition, “Polite attention or respect given by men to women.” Can these two definitions of gallantry be any further apart? Like the contraries of military chivalry vs. chivalric love, these two definitions of gallantry stretch the definition to cover two completely different domains of behaviour. It appears then that women of the time successfully harnessed men’s greatest sacrificial behaviours –chivalry and gallantry- to indulge their narcissistic appetites.

A vassal is defined as a bondman, a slave, a subordinate or dependent, or a person who entered into a mutual obligation to a lord or monarch in the context of the feudal system in medieval Europe. The obligations often included military support and mutual protection in exchange for certain privileges, usually including the grant of land held as a fiefdom. Vassalage was then utilized as a conceit that Maurice Valency called “the shaping principle of the whole design of courtly love.”³ Whether it was a knight, troubadour, or commoner the vassal-to-woman routine was the order of the day then, exactly as it is today.⁴ Poets adopted the terminology of feudalism, declaring themselves the vassal of the lady and addressing her as midons (my lord), which was taken as standard flattery of a woman. One particularly striking practice showing an adaption from the feudal model involved the man kneeling on one knee before the woman. By kneeling down in this way he assumes the posture of a vassal. He speaks, pledging his faith, promising, like a liege man, not to offer his services to anyone else. He goes even further: in the manner of a serf, he makes her a gift of his entire person.

Citing evidence of vassalism Amy Kelly writes, “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.”⁵

In short it was the lover’s feudal relationship between vassal and overlord which provided the lover with a model for his humble and servile conduct.²

_____

The lead actors – then and now
Imagine twelfth century Europe as a great stage performance enacting the themes of chivalric love, one that would become so popular its actors would continue to serve as role models for the global population 800 years later. The lead actors in this medieval play are as follows, accompanied (in brackets) with the titles we apply to those same actors today as they continue this ancient drama:

Courtly Ladies (= Feminists). Feminists today refer to courtly ladies of the late Middle Ages as the first feminists, or protofeminists, and as with modern feminists these women enjoyed considerable privilege and means. In the 12th – 14th centuries evidence shows that women began to agitate for increased authority over the ‘correct’ way for men and women to conduct relationships, with particular emphasis on what they felt were acceptable roles for males in a dignified and civil society. Not surprisingly this was precisely the time when powerful women were able to establish the female-headed ‘courts of love’ which acted in a comparable way to today’s Family Courts in that both arbitrated love disputes between conflicting couples.

Key literature from the period detailing proper etiquette expected in gender relations was commissioned for writing by powerful women (eg. ‘The Art of Courtly love’) and in some cases was written by women themselves (eg. Christine de Pizan’s writings or those of Marie de France). The emerging discourse acted like a drug that promised the introduction of a one-sided power for females over males, and through the dissemination of romance literature that promise rapidly spread to all social classes in the continent. We have been living with the consequences ever since, a revolution far more significant to the history gender relations than the introduction of the birth control pill and no-fault divorce combined- the latter being mere epiphenomena generated within a larger culture of chivalric love.

The archetypes introduced into society by these high-born ladies are instantly recognizable; the damsel in distress (women as innocent, woman as helpless, women as victim), the princess (women as beautiful, women as narcissistic subject requiring devotion, women as deserving of special privileges), and the high born Ladies (women as morally pure, women as precious, women as superior, women as entitled). These illusions ensured that the attentions of men would be spent attending to women, a program so successful that modern feminists continue to shape today’s cultural landscape with the program of their protofeminists forebears. And just like their forebears, feminists continue to use shaming narratives to facilitate their pedestalizing inheritance.

White Knights (= White Knights). We retain this metaphor for such heroic individuals, men who are gallant in so many ways, but mostly the wrong ways such as showing-off to undeserving women and concomitantly delighting in competing with and hurting other men. More than any other player in this play, white knights specialize in gallant behaviour for the purpose of impressing and ultimately getting their egos stroked by women.

For these first white knights the tournament, the forerunner to modern sporting tournaments, consisted of chivalrous competitions or fights in the Middle Ages. In these fights knights were only too willing to hurt their fellow men to win the praise of female spectators. The competitors were observed doing battle by women who would throw their garments into the arena where the sportsmen would pick them up and wear pieces of women’s clothes -hence the male wearing a particular woman’s scarf would represent her in the tournament.

The men were basically fighting for “her” then, just as they did elsewhere on real battlefields for wife and mother. The gallant man who won his tournament was granted an opportunity to dally with the woman whom he represented in the ring. We retain this gynocentric tradition today as golf tournaments, football tournaments, martial arts tournaments and so on, all designed to show male prowess where the winning competitors get to dally with the best ladies.

Other activities of white knights include impressing women with big gestures of protection. For example, the ‘Enterprise of the Green Shield with the White Lady’ was a chivalric order founded by Jean Le Maingre and twelve knights in 1399 committing themselves to the protection of women. Inspired by the ideal of courtly love, the stated purpose of the order was to guard and defend the honour, estate, goods, reputation, fame and praise of all ladies and damsels, an undertaking that earned the praise of Christine de Pizan. Le Maingre, tired of receiving complaints from ladies, maidens, and widows claiming to be oppressed by powerful men bent on depriving them of the lands and honours, and finding no knight or squire willing to defend their just cause, founded an order of twelve knights sworn to carry “a shield of gold enamelled with green and a white lady inside”.

The twelve knights, after swearing this oath, affirmed a long letter explaining their purpose and disseminated it widely in France and beyond her borders. The letter explained that any lady young or old finding herself the victim of injustice could petition one or more or the knights for redress and that knight would respond promptly and leave whatever other task he was performing to fight the lady’s oppressor personally. The similarities of this Order with contemporary enterprises such as the White Ribbon Campaign in which male “ambassadors” pledge an oath to all of womanhood to never condone, excuse or remain silent about violence against women, and to intervene and take action against any man accused of wrongdoing against a woman. The similarities in these gallant missions make clear that the lineage of white knights has progressed seamlessly into the modern era.

Troubadours I (= PUA and Game promoters). The troubadours’ job was to spread the word about the virtues of chivalric love through music, song, poetry and storytelling. Aristocracy and commoner alike enjoyed hearing tales about bravery, and ladies were swept away with epic love poems as the troubadours practiced the rituals of chivalric love. Just like PUAs or Gamers today who write and speak in praise of pussy, troubadours too were composers and promoters of the ‘arts of love’ aimed at securing sexual fulfilment.

Like those troubadours, Roosh and Roissy (etc.) continue the tradition of prose-writing to illustrate the many ways to flatter women in order to get into their pants. Game is a very apt word for this 800 yr old tradition, with its proscription for rehearsed lines and lack of personal authenticity. It is a scripted game of women-worship aimed at a narrow goal. In essence this Casanova routine amounts to a feigning of chivalric love for the purposes of manipulation, usually to gain sex. When modern women call these men ‘players’ they may be very close to the mark. While Roosh et.al. outwardly claim to reject chivalry, they nevertheless embrace its tenets like consummate thespians.

Troubadours II (= Profeminist Men – sometimes derogatorily named ‘manginas’). Unlike the troubadours mentioned above who advocated for a love aimed at sexual fulfillment, Troubadour II advocated a more idealized love of longing that did not consummate in sexual fulfillment. In essence these men more resembled sycophantic Romeos than horny Casanovas. The guiding concept for them was called “fin’ amors,” which meant pure love. Such men were particularly prevalent in the north of France, whereas in the south we see that troubadours (type I mentioned up above) celebrated a love that was adulterous or carnal in which full sexual encounters were sought.

Another thing that distinguished type II troubadours from the former is authenticity. These men appeared to identify wholly with the role and were not merely players. The desire to serve women as their vassal, or perhaps as their masochistic slave, called upon their innermost character. Think of today’s version being the typical profeminist men who work slavishly to pass on the message of their feminist superiors, much as these troubadours slaved to advocate the narcissistic idiosyncrasies of their Ladies. The vassalage role applies here more than with any other character of the Middle Ages – not as a merely pretentious means-to-an-end routine to gain sex, but rather as a soul-affirming act.

_____

Which brings us to what the MHRM refers to as gynocentrism. It is clear from the foregoing that unless evidence of (broadspread) gynocentric culture can be found prior to the Middle Ages, then gynocentrism is precisely 800 years old. In order to determine if this thesis is valid we need first to define exactly what we mean by “gynocentrism”.

The term gynocentrism has been in circulation since the 1800’s, as far as I can tell, with the general definition being “focused on women; concerned with only women.”⁶ Adam Kostakis further qualifies gynocentrism as, “male sacrifice for the benefit of women” and “the deference of men to women,” and he concludes; “Gynocentrism, whether it went by the name honor, nobility, chivalry, or feminism, its essence has gone unchanged. It remains a peculiarly male duty to help the women onto the lifeboats, while the men themselves face a certain and icy death.”⁷

From these definitions we see that gynocentrism could refer to any one female-centered practice in an otherwise androcentric society, or to even a single gynocentric act carried out by one individual. With this broad usage in mind the phrase ‘gynocentric culture’ proves more precise for the purposes of this essay , which phrase I will define here as any culture instituting rules for gender relationships that benefit females at the expense of males across a broad range of measures.

At the base of our current form of gynocentrism lies the practice of enforced male sacrifice for the benefit of women. If we accept this definition we need to look back and ask the accompanying question of whether male sacrifices throughout history were always made for the sake of women, or alternatively for the sake of some other primary goal? For instance, when men went to die in vast numbers in wars, was it for women, or was it rather for Man, King and Country? If the latter we cannot then claim that this was a result of some intentional gynocentric culture, at least not in the way I have defined it here. If the sacrifice isn’t intended for the benefit women, even if women were occasional beneficiaries of male sacrifice, then we are not dealing with gynocentrism.

Male disposability strictly “for the benefit of women” comes in strongly only after the advent of the 12th century gender revolution in Europe – a revolution that delivered us terms like gallantry, chivalry, chivalric love, courtesy, romance and so on. From that period onward gynocentric practices grew exponentially, culminating in the demands of today’s feminism. In sum, gynocentrism was a patchy phenomenon at best before the middle ages, after which it became ubiquitous.

With all this in mind it makes little sense to talk of gynocentric culture starting with the industrial revolution a mere 200 years ago (or 100 or even 30 yrs ago), or of it being two million years old as some would argue. We are not simply fighting two million years of genetic programming; our culturally constructed enemy is much, much simpler to pinpoint and to potentially reverse. The historical evidence is strong. All we need do now is look at the circumstances under which gynocentrism first began to flourish and attempt to reverse those circumstances. Specifically, if gynocentric culture was brought about by the practice of shaming, then that is the enemy to target in order to reverse the entire enterprise. For me that process could begin by rejecting the fake moral purity to which women of the last millennia have pretended and against which the worst examples of men have been measured in order to shame the entire gender.

References

1. Amy Kelly, ‘Eleanor of Aquitaine and Her Courts of Love’ Source: Speculum, Vol. 12, No. 1 (Published by Medieval Academy of America, 1937)
2. Jennifer G. Wollock, Rethinking Chivalry and Courtly Love, (Published by Praeger, 2011)
3. Maurice Valency, In Praise of Love: An Introduction to the Love Poetry of the Renaissance, (Macmillan, 1961)
4. For an excellent article about vassaldom today see Gordon Wadsworth’s ‘The Western Butler and his Manhood’ which indicates an unbroken line between the romantic vassaldom of the Middle Ages and the “butler” role expected of males today. (Published on AVfM, 2013)
5. Amy Kelly, ‘Did Women Have a Renaissance?’ in Women, History, and Theory (Published by UCP Press, 1984)
6. Dictionary.com – Gynocentric
7. Adam Kostakis, Gynocentrism Theory – (Published online, 2011). Although Kostakis assumes gynocentrism has been around throughout recorded history, he singles out the Middle Ages for comment: “There is an enormous amount of continuity between the chivalric class code which arose in the Middle Ages and modern feminism… One could say that they are the same entity, which now exists in a more mature form – certainly, we are not dealing with two separate creatures.”

*This article first published at A Voice for Men on 25 March, 2013.

Gynocentrism Theory Lectures (Peter Wright)

November 9, 2012April 9, 2025 / Peter Wright / Leave a comment

The following selection of gynocentrism theory articles were published during 2012 – 2025 by Peter Wright. (For the full collection see Amazon title on right-hand sidebar).

INTERVIEWS:

GYNOCENTRISM THEORY ARTICLE SERIES:

1. Introduction to Gynocentrism
2. Gynocentric Culture
3. Gynocentric Culture Complex (GCC)
4. Timeline of Gynocentric Culture
5. The Sexual-Relations Contract
6. The Birth of Chivalric Love
7. How to tame men – gynocentrism style
8. What Ever Happened to Chivalry?
9. Gynocentric Marriage
10. Chasing The Dragon (video) | Chasing The Dragon (text)
11. Slaying The Dragon: Overcoming Sexual Superstimuli
12. Gynocentrism – why so hard to kill?
13. Damseling, Chivalry and Courtly Love (Part 1)
14. Damseling, Chivalry and Courtly Love (Part 2)
15. Sporting Tournaments: A Gynocentric Tradition
16. The Evolution of Gynocentrism Via Romance Writings
17. The Gynocentrism of Jordan Peterson
18. Jordan Peterson’s Map For Oedipal Men
19. Bastardized Chivalry: From Concern For Weakness to Sexual Exploitation
20. What’s In a Suffix? Taking a Closer Look At The Meaning of Gyno–centrism
21. A Sentimental Continuation of Coverture
22. Anti-Gynocentrism Is the Only Anti-Feminism That Matters
23. ‘Frau Minne’ The Goddess Who Steals Men’s Hearts
24. Mythologies of The Men’s Rights And Feminist Movements
25. Tradwives, Modwives and Feminists
26. Gynocentrism As A Narcissistic Pathology – Part 1
27. Gynocentrism As A Narcissistic Pathology – Part 2
28. Hera, Ancient Greek goddess of feminism
29. A New Aristocracy
30. Women of Color Feminists vs. White Feminist Tears
31. White Supremacy: A Euphemism For White Women Worship
32. Alison Phipps: White Men’s Ship Floats on White Women’s Tears
33. The Biological Origins of Damseling
34. Two Modes of Damseling
35. Unintended Effects Of Transgender Activism On Men’s Issues
36. Transphobia vs. Manphobia
37. C.S. Lewis: The Feudalisation of Love
38. Feminism’s Transgender Fruit — Process Philosophy in Action
39. Gamma Bias In The Maintenance of Gynocentrism
40. The Tradwife Revisited
41. ‘Biological Gynocentrism’ : Falling Into The Feminist Trap?
42. Maladaptive Gynocentrism Is Not “Natural”
43. Aggrieved Entitlement – women’s reaction to temporary loss of chivalry
44. Narcissism Exaggerates Baseline Hypergamy
45. Has the MRM Become a Gynocentric Ideology?
46. Robert Briffault’s ‘Law’ Doesn’t Apply to Humans
47. Four Dimensions Of Cultural Gynocentrism
48. Presumption Of Male Disposability Is Based On Flawed Hypothesis
49. Gynocentric Economies Eventually Lead To Low Birthrates
50. Gynocentric misreading of Helen of Troy