Gynocentrism

by Peter Wright

  The first written Valentine note was believed to be by Charles the Duke of Orleans who in 1415 AD, while imprisoned in the Tower of London, sent a love letter to his wife. An excerpt from that letter still exists in the British Library’s collection and reads “I am already sick from love, My very gentle Valentine.” The date became further associated with romantic and courtly love when Geoffrey Chaucer incorporated St. Valentine’s Day into his love poem “The Parliament of Foules.” Chaucer, who wrote the love poem to commemorate the engagement of Richard II and Anne of Bohemia, linked the royal engagement with the pairing of birds and Valentine’s Day. The holiday was also mentioned in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, as well as by the poet John Donne, and has since evolved into what most would now consider the most romantic day of the year. Perhaps the most famous Valentine’s poem is this one published in Gammer Gurton’s Garland, a 1784 collection of English rhymes:

  The rose is red, the violet’s blue,

  The honey’s sweet, and so are you.

  Thou are my love and I am thine;

  I drew thee to my Valentine:

  The lot was cast and then I drew,

  And Fortune said it shou’d be you.

  Valentine’s card – boy on one knee

  The tradition of exchanging gifts and tokens was established during the height of romantic love when people began to select their own Valentine’s mates, and the tradition began to appear frequently in love poetry. The elaborate exchanges of poetry, cards, and gifts cemented it as a holiday for the celebration of love in European popular culture. Valentine’s Day has since spread all over the world, and most nations still celebrate it on the 14th of February with flowers, gifts, and cards.

  The soil in which the celebration bloomed celebrated love as illicit, passionate, morally elevating, transcendent, if at times painful and humiliating: the perfect recipe for an affair. Participants adopted the language of feudalism with chivalric men declaring themselves “love servants” who pledged themselves in submission, obedience, and utility to ladies whom they worshipped as both their overlord and moral superior. This feudalisation of love -so called by C.S. Lewis- was popularized by troubadours in poems and songs, providing both the model and the spirit we continue to express on Valentine’s Day.

  “Valentine’s Day gives your crush or girlfriend or fiancé or wife, either a taste or a reminder of your ability to care about things not because you care about them, but because you care about her… and she cares about things.”1

  By the 18th century it had become a widespread custom for men in all social classes to exchange small tokens of affection or handwritten notes on February 14. In the Victorian era, printed cards replaced written letters as a way to express emotions, encouraged both by improvements in printing technology and cheaper postage rates. In the 1840s, Esther A. Howland began to sell the first mass-produced valentines in America. This practice was extended in the 20th century to all manners of gifts, especially in the United States. With the advent of consumerism in post-war America, Valentine’s Day became a day of gift-giving, from roses and chocolates to diamonds, and the immense popularity of the event tells us that the spirit of chivalry and courtly love is far indeed from being over.

  While some couples might equally indulge each other on this auspicious occasion, more often than not it will be a day on which the man will worship a woman as his true overlord, with himself playing the role of gift-giving serf. Perhaps Valentine’s Day will one day be worth celebrating if it becomes a reciprocal event, but until then the best advice for men on Vagina Day Valentine’s Day will be to reframe the event as Go Your Own Way Day.

  Source:

  [1] Brooke on Boys: Why Valentine’s Day Matters, in Primer Magazine: A Guy’s Post-College Guide to Growing Up. (Retrieved 09/02/2014 http://www.primermagazine.com/2010/love/brooke-on-boys-why-valentines-day-matters )

  28. Rituals of Marriage

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

  The Ring

  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 in early literary sources and artistic 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.”2 Professor Joan Kelly gives us a 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.” 3

  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 obvious 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 in practice because 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.4

  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?5 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.

  References:

  [1] Website: Society of Phineas (Retrieved 29/04/2014 from http://societyofphinas.wordpres.com/2013/04/16/the-one-ring-to-rule-over-him/ )

  [2] H.J. Chaytor, The Troubadours (1913)

  [3] Joan Kelly, Women, History, and Theory, University of Chicago Press, 1986

  [4] Peter Makin, Provence and Pound, University of California Press, 1978

  [5] Helen Smith, Men on Strike: Why Men Are Boycotting Marriage, Fatherhood, and the American Dream - and Why It Matters, Encounter Books, 2013

  29. Down The Aisle Again

  Once again I find myself walking into the murky waters of marriage, this time not in real life but in print, praise angels. As mentioned in a recent article by August Løvenskiolds, we had a conversation about marriage which unearthed some alternative ways of looking at it. On several points our understanding aligned, and on others they diverged. So rather than rely on August’s article alone, I’d like to lay down my own thoughts.

  The conversation was partly stimulated by a comment I made elsewhere, which we decided to unpack – and I hope to unpack it further in this article:

  Aside from those differences over origins, both sides agree that gynocentric marriage – its culture, customs, laws, taboos – must be utterly abandoned, not reformed. Notice here I refer to gynocentric marriage and not to a marriage of the minds, hearts, dreams, goals, projects, and bodies that might come with non-gynocentric relationships.

  The contention of this paragraph is, hypothetically speaking, that a marriage can be based on different priorities than those of gynocentrism. But before getting into it further lets start with the widest definition of marriage from the Oxford Dictionary, which is:

  “any intimate association or union”

  This definition covers pretty much all unions in which two or more things are brought together – whether in physics, biology, linguistics, or culture. In this case we are referring to human unions, and while some of the accompanying customs and behavior go well beyond this basic definition, they each conform to this minimum requirement in order to satisfy for the label marriage.

  There are two main orders of human union to consider: one involving culturally prescribed marriage customs, vs. the unadorned biological demand for intimate association.

  During our discussion, and in his recent article, August proposed several combinations of words (portmanteaus) to describe different kinds of marriage. For the sake of simplicity I’m only going to tackle the two primary terms which are Gynomarriage, and Biomarriage.

  Gynomarriage

  Gynomarriage, (portmanteau of gynocentrism + marriage) describes the typical union between a men and women today. It is based on the culturally prescribed roles of female superiority and male-chivalry, a combination more generally referred to as romantic love. This is our modern understanding of marriage.

  During the time this marriage has existed, laws have evolved to buttress and enforce it, laws tilted almost exclusively to favor wives both during the marriage, and especially in the case of its downfall.

  As a social construct gynomarriage has not been around forever, with other periods in history generating different forms of marriage as was outlined by August (eg. Andromarriage – male centered). During the last 800 years however, and ongoing today, gynomarriage has ruled; so that’s what we’ll concern ourselves with in this article. To better understand it, let’s contrast it with another, far more important ‘marriage’ holding relevance today.

  Biomarriage

  Biomarriage (biology + marriage) is a very different idea involving not cultural constructs, but biological necessities built into our DNA. The ‘marriage’ urged by biology is based on three factors: sexual pleasure; intimate bonding/attachment; and reproduction with the concomitant parenting instinct (hence why both males and females are triggered by neoteny).

  Each of these imperatives has operated since our remote hominid past and will continue to compel our behavior for long after gynocentric culture ceases to exist. Like gynomarriage, biomarriage takes place between two adults, but in this case has done so for literally millions of years, not hundreds.

  I’d like to spend the remainder of this piece talking about biomarriage because gynomarriage belongs, as any MGTOW or MHRA worth the name will tell you, in the scrap bin of history. People can easily get by without it, but the same cannot be said about biomarriage because the compulsion for human bonding, affection, and sex are far too powerful to ignore.

  Some MGTOW will refuse to consider a biomarriage with a woman, a serious but otherwise rational choice to make in an environment that exposes men to being savaged by the in-creep of gynocentric exploitation.

  If a man refuses the possibility of a non-gynocentric relationship with a woman, what is required are, at bare minimum, artificial avenues for expressing his biological compulsions. He can satisfy sexual needs with porn, imagination, prostitutes, fleshlights or fuck-buddies. He can satisfy his attachment needs at least partially with close friends, family, or perhaps with a pet. Likewise he can satisfy parental instincts via fathering the young among us — teaching school children, working in a daycare center, caring for the disabled, mentoring a fatherless child, coaching little league, looking after orphaned animals, or buying a puppy.

  Are these replacement measures enough? Yes, they meet the minimum standard for maintaining physical and emotional stability. But it requires a strong understanding of one’s biological needs, and awareness, and a willingness to work hard on meeting those needs. Rather than satisfying our biological needs via “an intimate association or union” we can use a bricolage of band-aids to ensure our biological and psychological health.

  Summary

  So while you may legitimately think you can reject, nay should reject gynomarriage, do not rush to reject the elements we have detailed under the heading biomarriage unless you want to risk your health, and life.

  We need to realize that while history has been full of amazing men who never married and eschewed relationships with women, and n
o man should be shamed for taking this course, it also pays to remind men that choosing isolation from the opposite sex has a cost, and should not be viewed as something trivial to do to yourself. Depression, anxiety, paranoia, delusions, suicide, and more must be protected against. Most people can probably do it, but they’ll need more than video games and YouTube in the long run to pull it off. It’s going to involve things like meditation, consciously working to both acknowledge your urges, and to cater to them in creative ways.

  We can employ alternatives to satisfy our biological urges, but we might also revisit the question of whether there’s a way to conduct a biomarriage with a real flesh-n-blood human being minus the gynocentrism – think of it as a biofriendship based on the more essential facts of human being. I’d like to think that’s possible, if not now then sometime in the future.

  Chimpanzees regularly kiss and groom each other as part of an instinctual process of bonding