9.75/10.
Esther Vilar is the strangest liberal I have ever encountered. She is also the strangest woman I have encountered. This book, like her first one, reveals the complete emptiness of feminist pronouncements. Vilar reverses the tenets of feminism, showing the power women hold over men in our society. Using their looks, sexuality, and coyness, they trick men into becoming eternal providers of them while they do no work.
This essentially amounts to slavery for the man. The man has to work his entire life, or he will not survive. On the other hand, the woman has the capability of never working her entire life; of working random, low-intensity part-time jobs; or of getting a "career" if that is what she deems as fun. The woman has complete power over who has children, due to the invention of the birth control pill. The woman also has a guaranteed financial supporter of her and her children until death — that is called her "husband". If a divorce happens, the legal system will back her up and make sure he spends his days earning enough money just to give it all over to her.
However, there is a problem with the provider "love" that men give to women: it creates an extreme inequality between the two. The woman becomes a child that the man takes care of; the woman is to be pitied. The man thinks her too physically and mentally weak to work a job, so he does it for her. This creates a state of pity for the men, and narcissism for the woman. The woman has complete power over the relationship, and can extract money one way or the other from her adopter-husband. The woman, never giving anything but sex a few times a month, comes to respect the man less and less. He is her servant, he is her slave: how could any sexual attraction be founded upon that?
The man begins to see his adoptee-wife as a child, and a hopelessly inept and spoiled one at that. Who can have sex with someone so dependent? Thus arises the feelings of prudery and guilt for having sex with such a "pure" creature. "I don't want to hurt her, I don't want to trick her" thinks the man (implying her physical weakness and mental stupidity).
Men can only find sexual love, eros, with a woman who is at least near to their intellectual equal. Attraction = Sexual Polarity + Intellectual Equality. The most masculine men (hairy bodies, broad shoulders, tall, muscular, bearded, unemotional) are the most attractive to and most attracted to the most feminine women (large breasts, wide hips, slim, emotional). Men go for these most attractive women while they can. There is a small problem, however. Because men fawn over women sexually, attractive women never have a challenge in their life, physical or mental. Thus arises their inevitable stupidity. Meanwhile, other women see this and imitate the most attractive women (in an attempt to get men), becoming stupid likewise.
So now the most attractive women for men are the most stupid. Ugly and unfeminine women, having little favors being given to them due to their subpar looks, often gain in the mental sphere. They gain some culture and a bit of intelligence. They may become equally knowledgeable as the average man. But men, obviously, prefer the attractive woman to the smart one, even if she is dumber than a bag of rocks.
A similar phenomenon happens with men. Men who are highly intelligent tend to be scrawny and unattractive to women. In their natural sphere, they meet with little success. They compensate for this by doubling down on their intellectualism, finding something that they can finally succeed at. They pile up theories and attempt to get women another way: they proclaim that women are "oppressed". Overintellectualism having confused them, they gather together half-statistics and cherry-picked examples and then proclaim the terrible patriarchy. The first feminists were not women, but were in fact Marx, Engels, Bebel, and Freud. By proclaiming the oppression of women, it helped them in two manners: (1) they get the vote of women and (2) they justify in their own minds that they "deserve" the women because they "fought" for them.
Meanwhile, these women are resting at home, not exerting themselves whatsoever, never fighting battles or wars, swimming in their alimony payments, and sexually blackmailing their husbands. Having been coddled their entire life because of their looks, they remain infantile and stupid. What terrible oppression!
For men stuck in the husband-adopter situation, attraction has now waned. The provider instinct is fulfilled, but not the instinct for sex. These cannot be combined in the same person because they are contradictory. One treats the other as a child, the other as an equal. Women can handle this, as their children fulfill the provider instinct and their husband the sex instinct. However, men are not fulfilled in this manner. Generally, women use regular sex as bait for a marriage; then marriage occurs and sex wanes or even stops. The man becomes full husband-adopter for his new wife-adoptee. What an incredibly desirable scenario. I would trade 2/3 of my life earnings and 1/2 of my future earnings for such a deal.
Not. The solution for a man is to find a mistress, someone who fulfills his sexual needs as opposed to his provider needs. Does this hurt his woman? Certainly no less than it hurts other men. From time immemorial, high-status/rich men have had multiple women, whereas low-status/poor men have had one or zero women. To just think of a few examples, Johann von Goethe had many mistresses, as did Louis XIV, Edward VIII, James II, and perhaps every other monarch in the world. Why did they have mistresses? To satisfy a sexual instinct that their adoptee-wife could not satisfy as a complete financial dependent. Thus men are the "polygamous sex".