The Manipulated Man by Esther Vilar (1971) This book is dedicated to all those whom it does not mention: to the few men who refuse to be manipulated, to the few women who are not venal, and to all those fortunate enough to have lost their market value because they are either too old, too ugly, or too ill. E.V. Contents Author's Introduction The Slave's Happiness What Is Man? What Is Woman? The Horizon of a Woman The Fair Sex It's a Man's Universe Woman — Divine by Right of Stupidity Breaking Them In Manipulation by Means of Self-Abasement A Dictionary Women Have No Feelings Sex as a Reward The Female Libido Manipulation Through Bluff Commercialized Prayers Self-Conditioning Children as Hostages Women's Vices The Mask of Femininity The Business World as a Hunting Ground The "Emancipated" Female American Man — the Most Successfully Manipulated Male on Earth What is Love? Author's Introduction (1998 edn.) 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. 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. The second question I am often asked is about the topicality of the opinions I expressed then. To what extent is what I described over twenty-five years ago still relevant to the "new woman" and the "new man"? Here is a list of issues which I recognised in the original book to be men's most significant disadvantages compared to women. 1. Men are conscripted; women are not. 2. Men are sent to fight in wars; women are not. 3. Men retire later than women (even though, due to their lower life- expectancy, they should have the right to retire earlier). 4. Men have almost no influence over their reproduction (for males, there is neither a pill nor abortion — they can only get the children women want them to have). 5. Men support women; women never, or only temporarily, support men. 6. Men work all their lives; women work only temporarily or not at all. 7. Even though men work all their lives, and women work only temporarily or not at all, on average, men are poorer than women. 8. Men only "borrow" their children; women can keep them (as men work all their lives and women do not, men are automatically robbed of their children in cases of separation — with the reasoning that they have to work). As one can see, if anything, the female position of power has only consolidated. Today a career in the military is also open to women in many countries — but without conscription for all. Many achieved for themselves the right to practice their job for the same number of years as their male colleagues — however, the retirement age was not increased for all of us. And now as before, it does not occur to the underprivileged to fight against this grotesque state of affairs. Only as far as the sixth point is concerned, has there been a significant change. In the more entertaining spheres of work, there are more and more women who happily and willingly work and still keep their jobs despite having the children they nevertheless desire. But only a few of these women would be prepared to offer a life of comfort not only to their children but also the children's fathers, supported by their often substantial salaries; and fewer would further be prepared, in case of a separation, to give up their home and offspring and support the next admirer with what is left of her income. Also, men would not like it: emancipation may be fine, but to be "kept" by a woman is still not acceptable — housekeeping and raising children is not worthy of a "real" man. Sadly, women's manipulation of women is as topical today in the UK as it was back then, but so are the measures which could be used to end it — to the benefit of both sexes. In the meantime, however, there are already a few feminists who are talking also about men as human beings, so the continuation of this discussion may not have to be conducted quite so loudly. Esther Vilar, August 1998 The Slave's Happiness The lemon-colored MG skids across the road, and the woman driver brings it to a somewhat uncertain halt. She gets out and finds her left front tire flat. Without wasting a moment she prepares to fix it: she looks toward the passing cars as if expecting someone. Recognizing this standard international sign of woman in distress ("weak female let down by male technology"), a station wagon draws up. The driver sees what is wrong at a glance and says comfortingly, "Don't worry. We'll fix that in a jiffy." To prove his determination, he asks for her jack. He does not ask if she is capable of changing the tire herself because he knows — she is about thirty, smartly dressed and made-up — that she is not. Since she cannot find her jack, he fetches his own, together with his other tools. Five minutes later the job is done and the punctured tire properly stowed. His hands are covered with grease. She offers him an embroidered handkerchief, which he politely refuses. He has a rag for such occasions in his tool box. The woman thanks him profusely, apologizing for her "typically feminine" helplessness. She might have been there till dusk, she says, had he not stopped. He makes no reply and, as she gets back into the car, gallantly shuts the door for her. Through the wound-down window he advises her to have her tire patched at once and she promises to get her garage man to see to it that very evening. Then she drives off. As the man collects his tools and goes back to his own car, he wishes he could wash his hands. His shoes — he has been standing in the mud while changing the tire — are not as clean as they should be (he is a salesman). What is more, he will have to hurry to keep his next appointment. As he starts the engine he thinks, Women! One's more stupid than the next. He wonders what she would have done if he had not been there to help. He puts his foot on the accelerator and drives off — faster than usual. There is the delay to make up. After a while he starts to hum to himself. In a way, he is happy. Almost any man would have behaved in the same manner — and so would most women. Without thinking, simply because men are men and women so different from them, a woman will make use of a man whenever there is an opportunity. What else could the woman have done when her car broke down? She has been taught to get a man to help. Thanks to his knowledge, he was able to change the tire quickly — and at no cost to herself. True, he ruined his clothes, put his business in jeopardy, and endangered his own life by driving too fast afterward. Had he found something else wrong with her car, however, he would have repaired that, too. That is what his knowledge of cars is for. Why should a woman learn to change a flat when the opposite sex (half the world's population) is able and willing to do it for her? Women let men work for them, think for them, and take on their responsibilities — in fact, they exploit them. Yet, since men are strong, intelligent, and imaginative, while women are weak, unimaginative, and stupid, why isn't it men who exploit women? Could it be that strength, intelligence, and imagination are not prerequisites for power but merely qualifications for slavery? Could it be that the world is not being ruled by experts but by beings who are not fit for anything else — by women? And if this is so, how do women manage it so that their victims do not feel themselves cheated and humiliated, but rather believe themselves to be what they are least of all — masters of the universe? How do women manage to instill in men this sense of pride and superiority that inspires them to ever greater achievements? Why are women never unmasked? What Is Man? A man is a human being who works. By working, he supports himself, his wife, and his wife's children. A woman, on the other hand, is a human being who does not work — or at least only occasionally. Most of her life she supports neither herself nor her children, let alone her husband. Any qualities in a man that a woman finds useful, she calls masculine, all others, of no use to her or to anyone else for that matter, she chooses to call effeminate. A man's appearance has to be masculine if he wants to have success with women, and that means it will have to be geared to his one and only raison d'être — work. His appearance must conform to each and every task put to him, and he must always be able to fulfill it. Except at night when the majority of men wear striped pajamas with at most two pairs of pockets, men wear a kind of uniform made of durable, stain-resistant material in brown, blue, or gray. These uniforms, or "suits", have up to ten pockets, in which men carry instruments and tools indispensable for their work. Since a woman does not work, her night or day clothes rarely have pockets. For social events men are permitted to wear black, a color that shows marks and stains, since on those occasions men are less likely to dirty themselves. Moreover, the bright colors worn by women show to advantage against it. The occasional red or green evening jackets worn by men are acceptable, since, by contrast, all the real men present seem so much more masculine. The rest of a man's appearance is also adapted to his situation. His hair style requires only fifteen minutes at the barber every two or three weeks. Curls, waves, and tints are not encouraged as they might hinder his work. Men often work in the open air or spend a considerable amount of time in it, hence complicated styles would be a nuisance. Furthermore, it is improbable that such styles would make a hit with women since, unlike men, they never judge the opposite sex from an aesthetic point of view. So most men, after one or two attempts at individuality, realize tat women are indifferent to their efforts and revert to a standard style, short or long. The same is true of beards. Only oversensitive men — usually ones with intellectual pretensions — who want to appear mentally tough by letting their facial hair grow indiscriminately wear a fun beard for any length of time. It will be tolerated by women, however, for a beard is an important indication of a man's character and therefore of the way in which he might be most easily exploited. (His field of work will usually be that of the neurotic intellectual.) Generally a man uses an electric razor for about three minutes every morning to keep his beard in check. For his skin, soap and water are considered good enough. All that is required is cleanliness and an absence of make-up so that everyone can see what he is like. As for his fingernails, they should be as short as possible. Apart from a wedding ring — worn to show that he is already being used by a particular woman for a particular purpose — a proper man wears no ornaments. His clumsy, functional watch, worn on the wrist, is hardly decorative. Heavy in design, waterproof, shock-resistant, showing the correct date, it cannot possibly be called an ornament. Usually it was given to him by the woman for whom he works. Shirts, underwear, and socks for real men are so standardized that their only difference is one of size. They can be bought in any shop without difficulty or loss of time. Only in ties is there any degree of freedom — and then a man is usually so unused to choosing that he lets his woman buy them for him. Anyone visiting this earth from another planet would think it each man's goal to look as much like the next as possible. Yet, to fulfill woman's purposes, masculinity and male usefulness vary to a considerable degree: necessarily, because women, who hardly ever work, need men for everything. There are men who carefully maneuver a large limousine out of the garage at eight o'clock every morning. Others leave an hour earlier, traveling in a middleclass sedan. Still others leave when it is not yet light, wearing overalls and carrying lunch boxes, to catch buses, subways, or trains to factories or building sites. By a trick of fate, it is always the latter, the poorest, who are exploited by the least attractive women. For, unlike women (who have an eye for money), men notice only women's external appearance. Therefore, the more desirable women in their own class are always being snatched out from under their noses by men who happen to earn more. No matter what a particular man does or how he spends his day, he has one thing in common with all other men — he spends it in a degrading manner. And he himself does not gain by it. It is not his own livelihood that matters: he would have to struggle far less for that, since luxuries do not mean anything to him anyway. It is the fact that he does it for others that makes him so tremendously proud. He will undoubtedly have a photograph of his wife and children on his desk, and will miss no opportunity to hand it around. No matter what a man's job may be — bookkeeper, doctor, bus driver, or managing director — every moment of his life will be spent as a cog in a huge and pitiless system — a system designed to exploit him to the utmost, to his dying day. It may be interesting to add up figures and make them tally — but surely not year in, year out? How exciting it must be to drive a bus through a busy town! But always the same route, at the same time, in the same town, day after day, year after year? What a magnificent feeling of power to know that countless workers move at one's command! But how would one feel if one suddenly realized one was their prisoner and not their master? We have long ceased to play the games of childhood. As children, we became bored quickly and changed from one game to another. A man is like a child who is condemned to play the same game for the rest of his life. The reason is obvious: as soon as he is discovered to have a gift for one thing, he is made to specialize. Then, because he can earn more money in that field than another, he is forced to do it forever. If he was good at arithmetic in school, if he had a "head for figures", he will be sentenced to a lifetime of figure work as bookkeeper, mathematician, or computer operator, for there lies his maximum work potential. Therefore, he will add up figures, press buttons, and add up more figures, but he will never be able to say, "I'm bored. I want to do something else!" The woman who is exploiting him will never permit him to look for something else. Driven by this woman, he may engage in a desperate struggle against his competitors, to improve his position, and perhaps even become head clerk or managing director of a bank. But isn't the price he is paying for his improved salary rather too high? A man who changes his way of life, or rather his profession (for life and profession are synonymous to him), is considered unreliable. If he does it more than once, he becomes a social outcast and remains alone. The fear of being rejected by society must be considerable. Why else will a doctor (who as a child liked to observe tadpoles in jam jars) spend his life opening up nauseating growths, examining and pronouncing on human excretions? Why else does he busy himself night and day with people of such repulsiveness that everyone else is driven away? Does a pianist who, as a child, liked to tinkle on the piano really enjoy playing the same Chopin nocturne over and over again all his life? Why else does a politician who as a schoolboy discovered the techniques of manipulating people successfully continue as an adult, mouthing words and phrases as a minor government functionary? Does he actually enjoy contorting his face and playing the fool and listening to the idiotic chatter of other politicians? Surely he must once have dreamed of a different kind of life. Even if he became President of the United States, wouldn't the price be too high? No, one can hardly assume men do all this for pleasure and without feeling a desire for change. They do it because they have been manipulated into doing it: their whole life is nothing but a series of conditioned reflexes, a series of animal acts. A man who is no longer able to perform these acts, whose earning capacity is lessened, is considered a failure. He stands to lose everything — wife, family, home, his whole purpose in life — all things in fact which give him security. Of course one might say that a man who has lost his capacity for earning money is automatically freed from his burden and should be glad about this happy ending — but freedom is the last thing he wants. He functions, as we shall see, according to the principle of pleasure in non-freedom. To be sentenced to life-long freedom is a worse fate than life-long slavery. To put it another way: man is always searching for someone or something to enslave him, for only as a slave does he feel secure — and, as a rule, his choice falls on a woman. Who or what is this creature who is responsible for his lowly existence and who, moreover, exploits him in such a way that he only feels safe as her slave, and her slave alone? What Is Woman? A woman, as we have already said, is, in contrast to a man, a human being who does not work. One might leave it at that, for there isn't much more to say about her, were the basic concept of "human being" not so general and inexact in embracing both "man" and "woman". Life offers the human being two choices: animal existence — a lower order of life — and spiritual existence. In general, a woman will choose the former and opt for physical wellbeing, a place to breed, and an opportunity to indulge unhindered in her breeding habits. At birth, men and women have the same intellectual potential; there is no primary difference in intelligence between the sexes. It is also a fact that potential left to stagnate will atrophy. Women do not use their mental capacity: they deliberately let it disintegrate. After a few years of sporadic training, they revert to a state of irreversible mental torpor. Why do women not make use of their intellectual potential? For the simple reason that they do not need to. It is not essential for their survival. Theoretically it is possible for a beautiful woman to have less intelligence than a chimpanzee and still be considered an acceptable member of society. By the age of twelve at the latest, most women have decided to become prostitutes. Or, to put it another way, they have planned a future for themselves which consists of choosing a man and letting him do all the work. In return for his support, they are prepared to let him make use of their vagina at certain given moments. The minute a woman has made this decision she ceases to develop her mind. She may, of course, go on to obtain various degrees and diplomas. These increase her market value in the eyes of men, for men believe that a woman who can recite things by heart must also know and understand them. But any real possibility of communication between the sexes ceases at this point. Their paths are divided forever. One of man's worst mistakes, and one he makes over and over again, is to assume that woman is his equal, that is, a human being of equal mental and emotional capacity. A man may observe his wife, listen to her, judge her feelings by her reactions, but in all this he is judging her only by outward symptoms, for he is using his own scale of values. He knows what he would say, think, and do if he were in her shoes. When he looks at her depressing ways of doing things, he assumes there must be something that prevents her from doing what he himself would have done in her position. This is natural, as he considers himself the measure of all things — and rightly so — if humans define themselves as beings capable of abstract thought. When a man sees a woman spending hours cooking, washing dishes and cleaning, it never occurs to him that such jobs probably make her quite happy since they are exactly at her mental level. Instead he assumes that this drudgery prevents her from doing all those things which he himself considers worthwhile and desirable. Therefore, he invents automatic dishwashers, vacuum cleaners, and precooked foods to make her life easier and to allow her to lead the dream life he himself longs for. But he will be disappointed: rarely using the time she has gained to take an active interest in history, politics, or astro-physics, woman bakes cakes, irons underclothes, and makes ruffles and frills for blouses or, if she is especially enterprising, covers her bathroom with flower decals. It is natural, therefore, that man assumes such things to be the essential ingredients of gracious living. This idea must have been instilled by woman, as he himself really doesn't mind if his cakes are store-bought, his underpants unironed, or his bathroom devoid of flowery patterns. He invents cake mixes to liberate her from drudgery, automatic irons and toiletpaper holders already covered with flower patterns to make gracious living easier to attain — and still women take no interest in serious literature, politics, or the conquest of the universe. For her, this newfound leisure comes at just the right moment. At last she can take an interest in herself: since a longing after intellectual achievements is alien to her, she concentrates on her external appearance. Yet even this occupation is acceptable to man. He really loves his wife and wants her happiness more than anything in the world. Therefore, he produces non-smear lipstick, waterproof mascara, home permanents, no- iron frilly blouses, and throwaway underwear — always with the same aim in mind. In the end, he hopes, this being whose needs seem to him so much more sensitive, so much more refined, will gain freedom — freedom to achieve in her life the ideal state which is his dream: to live the life of a free man. Then he sits back and waits. Finally, as woman does not come to him of her own free will, he tries to tempt her into his world. He offers her coeducation, so that she is accustomed to his way of life from childhood. With all sorts of excuses, he gets her to attend his universities and initiates her into the mysteries of his own discoveries, hoping to awaken her interest in the wonders of life. He gives her access to the very last male strongholds, thereby relinquishing traditions sacred to him by encouraging her to make use of her right to vote in the hope that she will change the systems of government he has managed to think up so laboriously, according to her own ideas. Possibly he even hopes that she will be able to create peace in the world — for, in his opinion, women are a pacifist influence. In all this he is so determined and pigheaded that he fails to see what a fool he is making of himself — ridiculous by his own standards, not those of women, who have absolutely no sense of humour. No, women do not laugh at men. At most they get irritated. The old institutions of house and home are not yet so derelict and outdated that they can't justify relinquishing all their intellectual pursuits and renouncing all their claims to better jobs. One does wonder, however, what will happen when housework is still further mechanized, when there are enough good nursery schools nearby, or when — as must occur before long — men discover that children themselves are not essential. If only man would stop for one moment in his heedless rush toward progress and think about this state of affairs, he would inevitably realize that his efforts to give woman a sense of mental stimulation have been totally in vain. It is true that woman gets progressively more elegant, more well-groomed, more "cultured", but her demands on life will always be material, never intellectual. Has she ever made use of the mental processes he teaches at his universities to develop her own theories? Does she do independent research in the institutes he has thrown open to her? Someday it will dawn on man that woman does not read the wonderful books with which he has filled his libraries. And though she may well admire his marvellous works of art in museums, she herself will rarely create, only copy. Even the plays and films, visual exhortations to woman on her own level to liberate herself, are judged only by their entertainment value. They will never be a first step to revolution. When a man, believing woman his equal, realizes the futility of her way of life, he naturally tends to think that it must be his fault, that he must be suppressing her. But in our time women are no longer subject to the will of men. Quite the contrary. They have been given every opportunity to win their independence and if, after all this time, they have not liberated themselves and thrown off their shackles, we can only arrive at one conclusion: there are no shackles to throw off. It is true that men love women, but they also despise them. Anyone who gets up in the morning fresh and ready to conquer new worlds (with infrequent success, admittedly, because he has to earn a living) is bound to despise someone who simply isn't interested in such pursuits. Contempt may even be one of the main reasons for his efforts to further the mental development of a woman. He feels ashamed of her and assumes that she, too, must be ashamed of herself. So, being a gentleman, he tries to help. Men seem incapable of realizing that women entirely lack ambition, desire for knowledge, and need to prove themselves, all things which, to him, are a matter of course. They allow men to live in a world apart because they do not want to join them. Why should they? The sort of independence men have means nothing to women, because women don't feel dependent. They are not even embarrassed by the intellectual superiority of men because they have no ambition in that direction. There is one great advantage which women have over men: they have a choice — a choice between the life of a man and the life of a dimwitted, parasitic luxury item. There are too few women who would not select the latter. Men do not have this choice.