Christian Relaunch

Psephogynism (Defiant Feminism)

The word is based on Greek psephos = vote, gynE = woman, and the "Votes for women" campaign of the early 1900's is a classic example of it. Political voting is always about control of the use of force, a distinctively masculine function, so one's view on that specific issue is a good sign of one's view on the broader question, and I have invented the word accordingly.

"Androcracy would waste the talents of half the population."

It is the futile attempt to defy men that wastes female energy. Liberated from this, a woman is free to develop in a feminine way, which involves serving men.

Unconsciously every woman knows what consciously she may deny, that she needs to be subject to a man. This may be why in this era of Defiance so many women dream of being forcibly fucked.

"62% of women have had a rape fantasy. For [them] the median frequency ... was about 4 times per year. [They] were ... 9% [purely] aversive, 45% [purely] erotic, and 46% [mixed]."

Jenny Bivona and Joseph Critelli, The Nature of Women's Rape Fantasies (2009). (They use the word "rape" in the usual modern Western sense.)

Extreme Psephogynism (Epicenalism)

"Women's empowerment and their full participation on the basis of equality in all spheres of society, including participation in the decision-making process and access to power, are fundamental for the achievement of equality, development and peace."

United Nations, Beijing Declaration, 1995. (Italics added.)

"We still have problems. We still have the fact that the only people who can actually carry a child are women."

Elizabeth Corby (CEO of Allianz Global Investors), Hardtalk (BBC), 25-Apr-2012.

"[We seek] ways to abolish gender hierarchies and discriminations. ... Both sexes should carry the burden of everyday chores together."

Mission21, Women and Gender and Gender Policy for the Office in Basel (2014).

"The roles that men and women play in society are not biologically determined. They are socially determined, changing and changeable.

United Nations Population Fund, Gender Equality, retrieved from www.unfpa.org/gender-equality, 2017.

Such outright Epicenalism is rare, but much discourse points in its direction, and if there is any point at which they would say "enough!" I have not found it. Presumably they will not be satisfied until every legislature (and consistory) is 50% female, and maybe not even then. (They are confused about exactly what they do want. Sometimes they seem to think that sex differences are both trivial and problematical!)

To see the difference between the sexes as a problem to be overcome would have been regarded as absurd by most people in most countries in most periods, but is now widely regarded as so self-evident that only a scoundrel would question it. Modern Western regimes seem determined to make the sexes interchangeable.

Epicenalism has done enormous harm by urging folk into patterns of activity more suited to the other sex. In the BBC's PM of 01-Sep-2017, presenter Carolyn Quinn spends five minutes (25m to 30m) trying to maneuver a child behaviour expert who (a propos a ludicrous all-girl remake of Lord of the Flies) is trying to explain that boys and girls are different into saying that boys and girls are the same.

The Attempt to Compromise

The word equality causes some confusion. In Docile Feminism it means only that masculine and feminine activities are equally valuable, but the Western world is deeply attached to a vague notion of equality that in practice usually implies defiance and leads down a slippery slope toward Epicenalism, the logical conclusion of the underlying assumption of modern Humanism according to which humanity is entitled to do and be anything it wants.

Thus Psephogynism constantly tends to downplay difference while trying to stop short of the obvious absurdity of complete denial.

Mary Wollstonecraft

An early case of Docile Feminism slipping down the Psephogynistic slope into Epicenalism is Mary Wollstonecraft, a pioneer of Feminism and an example of its confusions.

"Men seem to be designed by Providence to attain a greater degree of virtue ... but I see not the shadow of a reason to conclude that their virtues should differ in respect to their nature. ... I entreat [men] to assist to emancipate their companion, to make her a help meet for them! Would men but generously snap our chains, and be content with rational fellowship instead of slavish obedience, they would find us more observant daughters, more affectionate sisters, more faithful wives, more reasonable mothers; in a word, better citizens."

Mary Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792).

Most of that text is compatible with Docile Feminism. Its author's chief practical concern, that women should emerge from their habitual frivolity into a fuller life, was clearly correct, not only for the "gentlewomen" of whom she spoke but for all women.

The problem is in the idea of a unisex virtue, always the same for both sexes. This idea expresses the abstract Personality idol of modern Humanism. It is misleading because if our activities are to differ then our actions must differ, and some of what is virtue for men must be vice for women. The warp of realm-specific natural standards is indeed unisex, but the weft of natural gender roles, that affects how the virtues that conform to those standards are realised, is not.

Her confusion is seen in the weasel-word "slavish". Whatever she means by it, presumably she is assuming that it is bad, but does she mean that female obedience is always bad, or only sometimes? Thus she expresses her doubts about female obedience and nudges the reader (and herself) toward deploring it, without giving any reason why they should deplore it.