Both male and female historians were inclined to subdue the historical evidence of Gynocentrism. Gynocentrism is a social system in which men - born, nurtured and conditioned by female indoctrination and education - are then subordinate to their mothers, wives, and female lovers/wives. Inherited from our early ancestors, the primates, Gynocentrism has dominated and marked human history from its very beginning up to the present. The account of a woman riding a man as if riding a beast has been prevalent and widespread in cultures from India to Europe for at least the past two millennia. That figure indicates the historical prominence of Gynocentrism. In that sense, the Panchatantra, a collection of tales arising in India about 2000 years ago, offers us an insight to an early example of the Gynocentric culture and is probably the most early depiction in literature of Gynocentric culture. The frame story of the Panchatantra, Book IV, tells of a crocodile who sought to kill his good friend. The reason that the crocodile sought to kill his friend was because the crocodileโs wife wanted to eat his friendโs heart. The wife said that she would starve herself to death unless the crocodile killed his friend for her. The crocodile, ruled by his wife, then sought to kill his friend.
While the frame story of Panchatantra, Book IV, is an exposition of Gynocentrism, the continuing account of the Gynocentric culture occurs as a tale within that frame. The friend of the crocodile, who is a monkey, learned of the crocodileโs plot to kill him. After having escaped the conspiracy, the monkey told the crocodile a tale about a king. A long time ago, said the monkey, a king ruled the entire world. One day, the kingโs wife got angry with him. The king approached his wife and responded: โBeloved, I cannot live a moment without you. I will fall at your feet and beg your pardonโ. The wife then replied: โIf you hold a bit in your mouth and let me climb on your back and drive you, and if, when driven, you neigh like a horse then I will relent.โ The king of course submitted and obeyed his wife. As the wife said, he accepted a collar in his mouth and neighed like a horse while carrying his wife around on his back. Thatโs the most powerful depiction of the Gynocentric culture and in fact also its ultimate meaning.
Historically, this type of Gynocentric culture with its misandristic attitude spread from India across ancient Mesopotamia to the west. The importance within here lies in the fact that Judaism as a basis for all monotheistic paths and specifically the Judeo Christian heritage which gave birth to feminism, has arisen from those Mesopotamian culture and its subsequent religions. Hence, Gynocentrism was not a Jewish invention but a cross cultural phenomenon and an all human shared tradition. The historical evidence for the spread of Gynocentric culture from east to west before feminism was spread from west to east the other way around occurs in an early Arabic book apprehensively ascribed to al-Jahiz who was a leading ninth-century Baghdad intellectual which is modern Iraq and ancient Mesopotamia. Furthermore, a Turkish manuscript in the library of the King of France in 1770 included the Gynocentric refrence as the centerpiece of a story of a young sultan and his old vizir.
The story recalls the account of an old vizir chastising the young sultan for spending so much time enjoying the pleasures of the slave women of his harem. After the sultan greatly reduced his time in pleasure with the women, the women protested. One of the sultanโs slave girls asked to be given to the vizir. She wanted to demonstrate that he could not resist her power. The sultan agreed to the transfer. The vizir soon became enamored of his new slave girl. Despite the vizir falling to his knees and imploring her, the slave girl treated him severely and refused to have sex with him. But she offered him a bargain: "if he would obey her completely for one day, then she would yield to his passionate desire. The vizir complied: โI can refuse you nothing,โ replied the old vizir {to the slave girl}; โyou shall forever experience from me an equal complaisanceโ.
As a result the slave girl used her power over the vizir to create the frame for the Gynocentric environment: โThis,โ said she to the vizir, โis the criterion of your love; let me see how far your boasted complaisance will go. You must submit to bear this saddle and bridle, and suffer me to mount upon your back.โ The poor vizir, with half reluctance, half pleasantry, put himself into the posture of a horse, and submitted to the girt and bridle". The ultimate meaning here canโt be misunderstood: not merely a wife, but even a slave girl, can rule a male ruler. In Western Europe, the earliest surviving instance of this Gunocentric concept is from an early thirteenth-century allegory. The characters in the legend are Alexander the Great, Aristotle his tutor, and Alexanderโs Indian mistress, who is repeatedly depicted as having blond hair. Aristotle admonished Alexander to give up his mistress. Alexander did so for many days, but then submitted to his desire and returned to his mistress. The mistress promised Alexander that she would avenge herself on his โpale old tutorโ:
"His logic and his grammar will do him no good against me. He will be a skillful fencer indeed if, now that I have made up my mind, Mother Nature does not subdue him through me. The mistress arose early in the morning and went out into the garden: "dressed in nothing but her shift โฆ in all her figure there was nothing that did not rightly belong there. And do not think that she had a wimple or band about her head; her beautiful tresses, long and blond, set off her loveliness. โฆ Barefoot, bareheaded, ungirdled, she went her way, raising the skirts of her tunic and singing. The scholar Aristotleโs thoughts became his desire for the mistressโs body. The mistress declared to Aristotle: โAh, tutor,โ she said, โbefore I yield to your folly, you must, if you are so stricken with love, consent to do a strange thing for me. For I have been seized with a great desire to ride astride you over the grass in this garden. And I want you to wear a saddle, for so I shall ride more respectablyโฆโฆโฆ..
The old man replied joyfully that he would do that willingly and as one who belonged to her entirely. The God of Love must really have overwhelmed him to make him carry a palfreyโs saddle on his shoulder into the garden. You can imagine how mad he lookd carrying it. And she busied herself to put it on his back. Love can indeed work miracles with an old codger, since Nature so commands, if he can cause the greatest scholar in the world to be saddled like an old nag and crawl on all fours over the grass โฆ He let the girl get up on his back and so he carried her". As we can see the Gynocentric image of a woman riding a man as if he were a beast subsequently became widespread in European literature and art. With can say with great and almost absolute certainty that this Gynocentric image almost surely was transmitted to Europe from an ancient Indian source such as the Panchatantra over Mesopotamia and the Jewish religion. It is not only the geographic and historical range of the Gynocentrism that testifies to the importance of Gynocentrism across a wide range of times and societies but it is in Specially in Harmony with the general transition of culture as well as knowledge and religions heritage from east to west.
In common sense, sex is natural and powerful. Yet discussion of Gynocentrism is difficult and often not only suppressed but even taboo. The Gynocentric account is a rare means for expressing the actual, underlying natural distribution of power by sex in human societies. Many scholars have confused matriarchy, patriarchy and Gynocentrism. The root of that confusion is male fear of inadequacy in penetration. Not only every new born son, but even every male ruler, has a mother, and most, at least one female lover. The implication of binary difference is a relation of domination and subordination, like that of hydrogen and oxygen. Foucault. Butler. Increased scholarly appreciation for the social construction of the social construction of gender has engendered a more prolific gender field of academic literature. An significant result has been the installation of new leading metaphor namely that "Gynocentrism (and at least in theory matriarchy too) encompasses patriarchy". In fact, patriarchy isn't a corresponding reality but merely a myth created by the Gynocentric culture and it's matriarchal dynamics: "If Chaucer has any authority over the scandal of gender difference that this tale exposes, it is of an implicated sort that can only laugh at the absurdity of a system that often works despite its flimsy claims to authority. โฆ each of these performances, because they are revealed to be absurd, demonstrates the ways that men and women collaborate to make fictions of gender convincing"
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