Esther Vilar's criticism of women

Discussion of the nature of Ultimate Reality and the path to Enlightenment.
Locked
User avatar
Kelly Jones
Posts: 2665
Joined: Wed Mar 22, 2006 3:51 pm
Location: Australia
Contact:

Esther Vilar's criticism of women

Post by Kelly Jones »

Carmel has raised a question about my attitude to women, and the way I attack what I regard as lacking wisdom:
The heart of your delusion is that you believe that your mind is free. It isn't and that is why you continue to pour acid on everyone who doesn't fit into your narrow, authoritarian and autocratic version of "wisdom". Your bizarre obsession with women's flaws is a form of self hatred.
I'll leave aside for the moment the comical criticism that has been bandying about the forum lately, that I'm a death-obsessed, maggoty hater of life. The real focus of this thread is the one about criticising women's flaws. Is it true that a female who criticises women or feminine psychology consistently hates themself? Is this always true? I'd like to offer some of Esther Vilar's views here as a counter-argument to Carmel's. This is from the introduction to the 1998 reprint of her book, "The Manipulated Man":
Over twenty-five years have passed since the publication of my book The Manipulated Man --- a pamphlet written in great anger against the women's movement's worldwide monopoly of opinion. The determination with which those women portrayed us as victims of men not only seemed humiliating but also unrealistic. If someone should want to change the destiny of our sex --- a wish I had then as I have today --- then that someone should attempt to do so with more honesty. And possibly also with a little humour. I would like to take the opportunity presented by the re-issue of my book to answer to questions which I am asked again and again in this context.

People often ask me if I would write this book again. Well, I find it right and proper to have done so. But seen from today's perspective, my courage in those days may only be attributable to a lack of imagination. Despite all I wrote, I could not really imagine the power I was up against. It seemed that one is only allowed to criticise women on the quiet --- especially as a woman --- and could only expect agreement behind closed doors.
[My italics]

As we women have, thanks to our relatively stress-free life, a higher life-expectancy than men and consequently make up the majority of voters in Western industrial nations, no politician could afford to offend us. And the media is not interested in discussing the issues involved either. Their products are financed through the advertising of consumer goods, and should we women decide to stop reading a certain newspaper or magazine as its editorial policy displeases us, then the advertisements targeted at us also disappear.

After all, it is well established that women make the majority of purchasing decisions. However, I had also underestimated men's fear of re-evaluating their position. Yet the more sovereignty they are losing in their professional lives --- the more automatic their work, the more controlled by computers they become, the more that increasing unemployment forces them to adopt obsequious behaviour towards customers and superiors --- then the more they have to be afraid of a recognition of their predicament. And the more essential it becomes to maintain their illusion that it is not they who are the slaves but those on whose behalf they subject themselves to such an existence.

As absurd as it may sound, today's men need feminism much more than their wives do. Feminists are the last ones who still describe men the way they like to see themselves: as egocentric, power-obsessed, ruthless and without inhibitions when it comes to satisfying their instincts. Therefore the most aggressive Women's Libbers find themselves in the strange predicament of doing more to maintain the status quo than anyone else. Without arrogant accusations, the macho man would no longer exist, except perhaps in the movies. If the press stylise men as rapacious wolves, the actual sacrificial lambs of this "men's society", men themselves, would no longer flock to the factories so obediently.

So I hadn't imagined broadly enough the isolation I would find myself in after writing this book. Nor had I envisaged the consequences which it would have for subsequent writing and even for my private life --- violent threats have not ceased to this date. A woman who defended the arch-enemy --- who didn't equate domestic life with solitary confinement and who described the company of young children as a pleasure, not a burden --- necessarily had to become a "misogynist", even a "reactionary" and "fascist" in the eyes of the public.

Had not Karl Marx determined once and for all that in an industrial society it is us, the women, who are the most oppressed? It goes without saying, doesn't it, that someone who did not want to take part in the canonisation of her own sex is also opposed to equal wages and equal opportunities? In other words, if I had known then what I know today, I probably wouldn't have written this book. And that is precisely the reason why I am so glad to have written it. I would like to thank the handful of people who have stood up for me and my work. Typically, most of them were women.
So, is Vilar displaying a bizarre obsession with women's flaws, just because she has maintained the same critical position of women for almost thirty years? You be the judge.

I'm happy to upload more quotes from her book anon.


.
Locked