I have a small but treasured collection of books which I call my "weird collection." they're one-of-a-kind books, sometimes from a small publishers, which contain unpopular opinions which the rest of society has never seriously considered.
One such book is "You May Smoke" which argues that cigarettes are good for you. Another is called "Hollow Earth" which claims that mastadons live in a hollow earth lit by an interior sun. Another claims to have a photograph of God and still another claims that since men cause most of the world's crimes that men should killed off in enormous numbers so that women can feel safe again. I don't agree with these opinions but I sure am glad that I bought the books. If readers are interested I'll share some of these in the coming months.
My first "weird" book is Esther Vilar's "The Manipulated Man." I bought the book in a used book store a long time ago but I think it's still in print, maybe from a small publisher. Vilar was a German doctor, and a severe critic of the feminism of her time (1972). Here's (above) a sample of her writing style.
If Vilars could see into this era she'd see a mountain of indepedent research papers by women.
After fifty women (above) turn into "indifferent heaps of human cells."
Vilars lived in the era when most women were housewives. She considered these wives (discussed above) to be contemptable parasites on their husbands. She was particularly mad about make-up and fashion which she considered childish and manipulative.
In the world of Vilars, men don't matter except as providers. We're just background to the real show which is women competing with women.
Women are only interested in other women (above) but not in a lesbian way.
According to Vilars men are socialized at an early age to be slaves to women.
As you can see (above) , Vilars' women are far from having penis envy. Actually I agree with her on this point. Where did Freud get that from anyway?
Vilars' women yawn through sex.
In the world of Vilars, men don't matter except as providers. We're just background to the real show which is women competing with women.
Women are only interested in other women (above) but not in a lesbian way.
According to Vilars men are socialized at an early age to be slaves to women.
As you can see (above) , Vilars' women are far from having penis envy. Actually I agree with her on this point. Where did Freud get that from anyway?
Vilars' women yawn through sex.
Speaking for myself most of the women in my life have been very interesting and also very supportive of the things I wanted to do. I wonder if Vilars modified these opinions over the years? I wonder what she's doing now?
38 comments:
Hmmm. I'd say the author and the book's total lack of notoriety even a few years on speaks for itself.
There were such an interesting lot of outre paperbacks put out in the early 70s! My mom's friends had loads of weirdness on their shelves from this period. It was a wacky time.
This is great! More of those books!
I'm no feminist, but I disagree strongly with most of what she says. I, do, however, agree with some of it.
I disagree strongly that men are bueutiful. They aren't. We're lumpy and hairy beasts.
I agree that fashion and make-up is stupid, but only to a degree. There is an acceptable level (like in the 1950s) but females overdo it nowadays. I read nowhere that back in the 1950s only 2% of women dyed their hair. Oh, to be born in 1935...
And I like her theory about men being women's slaves, but I prefer to think of it as chivalrous (which isn't dead unitl you stop practicing it)
And I agree that penis envy is a stupid theory. Freuds needs to take that...AHEM...cigar out of his mouth.
According to Vilars men are socialized at an early age to be slaves to women.
She sure as hell wasn't wrong about everything.
...but I prefer to think of it as chivalrous...
That's called Stockholm syndrome.
Probably everything else she says is true too, only not as universally or as primally as she seems to think. Just the ciurcumstances she could see outside her window. Her sample was skewed.
Freud was all wet. Guess why.
I read this book when it came out (1972), and then never heard or saw a single reference to it again -- and I've read a lot of stuff on these issues! Until today, I had even forgotten Vilar's name. As Jenny points out, maybe that means something! Part of what it might mean, though, is that authors get punished for saying things people disagree with, just as they often get a free ride to Parnassus for telling people things they already believe.
Don't get me wrong, a lot of what she says is now amusingly dated, and some of it is just plain nuts. But there was a real argument, much smarter and more penetrating than a lot of what was said on the other side in those days, that deserved to be taken more seriously than it was.
I'm nearing fifty and I find myself turning into an indifferent heap of human cells too!
See ya
Steve
I HIGHLY RECOMMEND this book...
How You Can Look Rich and Achieve Sexual Ecstasy by Rhona Barrett.
Somebody buy this book as a present for Eddie!
See ya
Steve
I cant believe you have "the Hollow Earth"! I've been Looking for it for years. Matt Groening wrote about it in his fifth grade diary.
Lester: Wow! A great review of "Catch 22"! I agree completely!
"Catcher in the Rye" is another book that pains me to think about. It's extremely well written but the point it makes, that kids are better than adults, seems so silly to me! Schools often assign it with "Lord of the Flies," which makes the point that kids suck.
When I was a teenager I thought this controversy was interesting but now I think it was a waste of precious school.
Steve: The Rhona Barrett book sounds great!
Precious school "time", excuse me!
>Schools often assign it with "Lord of the Flies," which makes the point that kids suck.
Eddie, I'm dissapointed! The point of "Lord Of The Flies" was that without civilization, humans are nore better than animals. It made the point that we're born evil and society makes us good.
Or maybe I've been watching too much South Park.
Jorge: You're right. I wrote it up the way I did because it sounded better but I wasn't completely off the mark!
It's Rona Barrett!
; D
...and she now lives up in heavenly Santa Ynez where she makes millions from a lavender crop. No kidding.
Full disclosure: I used to buy copies of "Rona Barrett's Hollywood" when I was a kid for the Gene Wilder photos. Oh God!
Eddie: I had to read "Catcher" in 9th grade. My review/analysis was very unfavorable--I had plenty of reasons to back up my opinion(which I still have--incidentally, I loved "Franny & Zooey" and "Nine Stories" so I don't think all Salinger is unworthy, but Catcher is a pain in the ass as far as I'm concerned. Not the classic it's trying to be)...but boy, did I make myself unpopular with my cool Catholic nun teacher for that one! I found myself in a bit of a Holden Caulfield pit: apparently there was suppsoed to be just one response to that book--you were supposed to love it. Meh.
Goddammit, reading back my post I sound like a total condescending asshole. I apologize, Eddie.
I'm leaving it up for everyone to see anyway.
Hey Eddie... Did you hear about your friend, Ray Bradbury? He was interviewed recently and he denied that Farenheit 451 was about censorship. He said it was about how television was dumbing people down. I like it when the whole world thinks a book has one meaning, and the author has a totally different one.
See ya
Steve
I think if i were a woman i would not envy the penis itself, but the ability to pee standing up, and not having wipe it later.
Off Topic...
Hey Eddie,
I noticed you wrote this on John K's blog, "The lip sync was off on the Disney clip and it doesn't look like they put their best animators or layout people on the scenes but I don't think it demonstrates that human animation sucks. The Clampett guy was great!"
I just wanted to tell you that in the case of the Disney cartoon, there was no lip sync intended. The cartoon is narrated by Jerry Colona and the train engineer, Casey Jones, never talks. So in the clip you saw Colona was only stating what Casey Jones felt; he was not the voice of Casey Jones.
Also, I believe the MAN in the Clampett cartoon is a caricature of Schlesinger's business manager John Burton. (Burton is also caricatured as the Gremlin with the saw in Russian Rhapsody.) Burton has a thin moustache, a mouth that curved upwards and big cheeks.
About this book: how do you see it as anti-feminist? The author is complaining about the very things that feminists in the 70's wanted to break free of, namely being dependent on men. The last thing feminists wanted to do was sit on the couch eating bon-bons while hubby brought home the bacon.
If anything the author of this book is anti-feminine, or rather the cliches that one thinks of as feminine. Only the author truly believes the cliches are real and sees her fellow sex as somehow devious. She seems to see her biases based soley on empirical evidence as facts.
Ironic that the author would catagorize all females as anti-intellectual, manipulative, greedy and lazy since she obviously doesn't believe she herself falls into any of those catagories.
>>Did you hear about your friend, Ray Bradbury? He was interviewed recently and he denied that Farenheit 451 was about censorship. He said it was about how television was dumbing people down.<<
WHAAAAAAAAAAT!? How could Bradbury deny that his book isn't about censorship? The state sactions the burning of books in the novel! If that isn't censorship, then what is?
Poor Bradbury, people totally missed his metaphor.
Now we will have to reread it and see how it apparently is relating to Television more directly.
Hollow earth is also in the news lately, sorta, heres' a meta link, that links to earlier articles
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/06/01/journey_to_the_cente.html
I think I may have met some of the women and men Villars describes so universally.
Eddie, this book seems fantastic!
I'm a proud feminist, but I'm also of the opinion that we men are persecuting ourselves out of our homophobic fears. I'd call myself a "masculinist" but it sounds a bit too much like a kneejerk anti-anti-prejudice philosophy, like when people complain of reverse racism or the lack of straight pride parades.
It's interesting to think about how that relates to the author's thesis - does she cover the strange ways men act to not seem unmanly in front of women? As you've said, a lot of what she's said is humorously outdated, but it's refreshing to see a book that speaks on the suffering of men.
Hunsecker: Thanks for clearing up the issue about the sync problem!
A very perceptive comment about Vilars! I don't think she's anti-feminine but I can see where you'd think so from the examples.
Soos, Benjamin: Glad you liked it!
Jenny: I'm glad somebody agrees about "Catcher." Kurt Vonnegut wrote a terrific essay criticizing Herman Hesse and a lot of his argumenta apply to Salinger. I agree that books like "Franny and Zooey" hold up better.
I must say while certainly dont take such a dim view of a womans metallity,to a large extent many of the things said in her book are true.
I have known lots of women who manipluate men into getting whatever they want.
women thrive in stupid social setting and can while away countless hours talking and never saying anything significant.
Observe women and men around you when you go through your day,women co-workers talk like children ooooing and aaahhhhing and thatssss sssooo cuuuuteing to each other about guys,or co workers children.
their minds dont work the same as a mans,they werent inteded too.
How can also argue against the fact that women make very few important contributions to society,men build,create and engineer alomst everything.
Matt Groening even made fun of the effect women have on mens motivation to work on his show Futurama.
It showed how after guys created a Marilyn monrobot they could have sex with ,the all quit their jobs and layed around like bums.
I think women still manilpulate men to get what the want,now though,they are much more blunt about it,instead of the coyness displayed in the 50s.
There was an old National Lampoon article on what the world would be like without women (Probably P. J. O'Rourke). A lot of beer hair and underwear, not too much picking up socks.
Anon: It's a good thing nobody's invented the Marilyn Monrobot yet!
Men are manipulated by women but we allow it. There is no cure for this willful stupidity.
Whoa...I have a copy of that same book! I never got around to reading it though..maybe I've missed some great entertainment!
I also have a book you would probably love to read that I bought in a thrift store called "Manhood..Wrecked and Rescued." It was written at the turn of the last century by a Reverend/doctor and the entire book is about how horrible masturbation is (it's written for men exclusively) and goes into detail about how the "graveyards are littered with the bodies of young men and boys who fell victim to the solitary vice." Along with the death threats are all sorts of ideas on how to stop playing with yourself including elaborate bowel evacuation instructions so that compacted crap in the intestines doesn't stimulate the prostate gland..one concoction names pancake syrup as a good enema ingredient.
I feel better that I am not the only one with a weird book collection.
:)
Cynthia
Cynthia: Wow! Sounds like a great book! Does internal pressure on the prostrate make guys horny? I never heard that before! I wonder if there's any truth in it.
And where does the masturbation- causes-death theory come from? How come so many doctors bought into it? What conviced scientists to believe that?
If you have time why not scan some pages and put them up on your blog?
"graveyards are littered with the bodies of young men and boys who fell victim to the solitary vice."
Funny that at the same period in history doctors were treating women by stimulating them to orgasm with electric vibrators. For some reason this was not even considered sexual.
How does our species survive?
Men are manipulated by women but we allow it. There is no cure for this willful stupidity.
Stop doing it. Become egalitarian. Worked for me.
OK, I will scan some of the prime quotes out of the book and post them on my site..hehehehe..and let you know when they are up if you want to go take a look.
The whole anti-masturbation thing I think was religious in it's foundation. This book was written by a combination reverend/doctor, so you have with him a double authority condemning the "solitary vice."
Another interesting thing in this book is that he seems to think that (unlike the usual Adam and Eve thing where it is Eve that tempt Adam) men corrupt the purity of women, that women never have sexual thoughts and never masturbate...so he was out to correct all the filthy wrong doings of men.
You may find it interesting that during this time period (As poorly portrayed in The Road To Wellville) there was a revolution in food and health, and it all tied into sex too. There were doctors that were convinced that spicy foods made you horny. That is why people like Dr. Graham invented the graham cracker, a bland and simple food to feed his sanitarium patients. Also Dr. Kellogg invented the bland cereal corn flakes around the same time. Interesting reasons why these products exist..they were meant to keep people from getting horny. Weird, huh?
Cynthia
cynthia: Wow! Fascinating! If you put something up then I'm there!
yeah for sure, women killed chivalry. it is open but still even men lack the eye to see, like eyes wide shut ! this women speaks the truth. But alas truth dwells among the false as a lotus among the mud frogs and gold among the dirt......
I just re-read the Manipulated Man, and quite frankly I agree with everything she says. Women control men, they control society, and are beyond reproach. If you want to challenge that you will be isolated and harassed. You don't have to look very hard to see that society is, by and large, set up for women. The economy is driven by women. And "child-rearing" is essentially brainwashing into this cult. First of all, a mother inculcates a child into the gender roles she believes in. This is essentially "chivalrism" for boys and "domineerism" for girls. Then the kids are shuffled off to a public school system where more women will continue the daily assault. As a result, male achievement has plummetted as they have internalized the feminist programming that all men are potential rapists and degenerate, and all women can do everything better than men and that men have always persecuted and suppressed them.
Vilar's philosophy is vilified because we have all been indoctrinated into thinking ourselves capable of "critical thinking" when in fact most people take this to mean that the point is to find something to criticize. In reality, the ideals we hold to be true are projected onto reality more often than not. And these ideas are impressed upon us when we are most vulnerable; i.e., as children. That the whole process of socialization is unconscious does not mean that women aren't skilled manipulators of men. It just means that they appear to believe what they are saying when they deny it.
Society is organized around very big lies. Lies so transparent they are simply seen as reality. And if a man is so well-socialized that he is able to believe without reservation that he is incapable of reason, ignoble, or stupid, then he will continue in his enslavement.
We are destroying the planet, so far as I can tell, so that women can have the children, SUVs, patent leather boots, and new trendy clothes every year. None of these women care about much except their own self-fulfillment. The men who go to war (or work) and bring home the bacon are their slaves. They do so because they are the victims of blackmail. As such its hard to have sympathy for the victim, given that his enslavement is so obviously self-induced. But when you factor in the reality that the process begins with the inculcation of these values in children, it becomes a serious tragedy.
The Anon above me needs to take off his tinfoil hat
Haw!
It's a lazy and empty review, ignorant of the fact that the book was a bestseller in multiple languages and is now in its third edition. Esther Vilar was on the Tonight Show to discuss the book with Johnny Carson, and you can see some good videos on Youtube of her debating her ideas. The Manipulated Man is hugely popular on the internet and is listed as required reading in some clubs and self-help groups. Some men agree with her, and some men think she is manipulating men through flattery, so they'll hate other women and avoid marriage, which carries out her revenge against the less intelligent women who were more popular than her. The book is still sparking debate.
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