The Polygamous Sex QUOTES

1 " A man who wants to gain power over a woman must follow the example of women and condition his sex drive. If he succeeds in becoming as cold as she, she can no longer bait him with sex into the role of provider. At most she could offer herself as an equal sex partner, as dependent on him as he is on her. If men could abstain from sex at judicious intervals they might even succeed in normalizing the female sex drive - even make women desire them more than the other way around. "

― Esther Vilar , The Polygamous Sex

2 " Power consists in making oneself the goal of another person's social instincts, without seeking to satisfy one's own social instincts through him. The other then does everything one asks. Powerlessness consists in wanting or having to satisfy one's social instincts through another person whose social instincts one has not succeeded in concentrating on oneself - one then does everything the other asks. "

― Esther Vilar , The Polygamous Sex

3 " A friend or an enemy can tell me something about my subjective being, a casual lover can judge my body — the man I love judges my entire being. Every one of his caresses tells me how I am: attractive, desirable. Every one of his questions and answers tells me what I am: a person with whom he wants to enjoy himself, who interests him more than all the others he knows. By choosing me among all others, my love has made me unique; I alone in all the world am the one he loves, and no other. If I am lucky in love, the definitions become more precise from day to day; after each date I know even better than before what I want to know about myself. The others can say what they like about me; I don't have to believe a word of it. Only the one I love can tell me about myself. Since his definitions grow increasingly precise, my dependence on him also grows more acute as time goes on, but he is in the same position with regard to me. I tell him that I belong to him alone, that he can do with me what he likes, that I cannot live without him. "

― Esther Vilar , The Polygamous Sex

4 " Male aggressiveness consists in asking a woman to have intercourse and waiting for her to say yes, or a definite no. Skilful tacticians enhance their chances of making out by distributing their attentions among several women at a time (one version of 'playing the field') thus increasing their statistical chances for a favorable answer, depending on circumstances. This is the height of male aggressiveness that is tolerated. Genuine aggressiveness - rape - [men] have forbidden themselves by law. "

― Esther Vilar , The Polygamous Sex

5 " A man who marries a woman inferior to himself i.e. 'adopts' her must expect that she cannot feel anything for him but liking and gratitude. A woman is better off than a child, after all; if necessary, she can take care of herself, like any man. That she nevertheless allows her husband to pay all the bills is a personal concession that can be retracted at any time. She is entitled, therefore, to high expectations: everything done for her must be first-rate, otherwise she may engage another protector or else, depending upon circumstances, even decide to take care of herself. Compared with the real father, a wife's 'adopted father' has no hope of becoming his pseudo-child's protege in his old age, either. The most he can hope for is the status of an inadequate or pseudo-protege i.e. if he is lucky, he may come to enjoy the woman's altruistic love, her charity.
The woman even gets a reward: she inherits his property, his insurance, his pension rights, so that he can go on providing for her after his death, the death she is statistically prepared to survive for, on the average, six years, plus the number of years she is younger than he is. "

― Esther Vilar , The Polygamous Sex

6 " A woman always marries up the social ladder, a man always marries beneath him. Doctors marry nurses, while women doctors marry the top men in their field, never hospital orderlies. Business executives marry their secretaries, while women executives will remain single rather than marry a mere underling. Young career girls seldom consider men working on the same level as themselves to be good enough. A stewardess hopes to marry a pilot or a businessman, never a steward or a waiter. The chic girls who wait on the customers in boutiques wouldn't dream of wasting their time on male shop assistants. 'The man I marry must be able to take care of me' is the slogan. It can only mean that he has to be bigger, stronger, and brighter than she, so that she 'can look up to him'. "

― Esther Vilar , The Polygamous Sex

7 " Female power is the foundation of all other power structures. Social power systems that do not rest directly on instinct can never be more than superstructures. Their leaders can rule only in areas of no special value to sex partners and proteges. A system that disregards the power of the really powerful sex is doomed from the outset: it cannot gain adherents. It is by the power of the dominant sex that all systems function at all. Without the consent of women, there could have been no fascism, no imperialism, no Inquisition. Men could not have become the tools of such systems, had they not been ruled by women. Only a person attached and subservient to another through his basic social instincts - a man with a family to support, typically - can be sucked into the treadmill of such a secondary system and be driven to commit acts of hypocrisy, terror, and treason. The power of woman is the root of force in others. "

― Esther Vilar , The Polygamous Sex

8 " Once a woman has opted for the role of the child (instead of lover) the next step is predetermined. A child must not show too great an interest in sex, on pain of losing both credibility and a child's privileges. A woman who values her status as protegee, therefore, must keep her sex drive under control. She must be in a position to make conscious use of her sexuality for her purposes i.e. to win a man who appears suited to play her father, rather than a man who excites and confuses her senses and her mind. And she must be able to refuse herself to her intended protector until he adopts her or at least commits himself clearly to such an intention. To see primarily the sex partner in a man is the end of her power over him. It means losing the motive of making him her protector - what good is a lover restrained by protective feelings ? - and being quite as dependent on him, sexually, as he is on her. "

― Esther Vilar , The Polygamous Sex

9 " Where there is superior force, I serve under constraint; where there is power, I serve willingly. "

― Esther Vilar , The Polygamous Sex

10 " The deception of men as to the role they play is more easily achieved, therefore, by influencing public opinion. While every man knows that he himself is not exploiting anyone, and that he personally is not raping his wife, he can be made to suppose that perhaps other men do. Hearing it daily on radio and television, not to mention the papers, will convince him eventually. When the better educated men keep on explaining to the simpler folk that even normal sexual intercourse must be interpreted as a rape of the female partner, and that the monotonous chores in a fully automated household, the day-long company of children and women friends, the eternal waiting for the husband's homecoming in the evening, all add up to the subtlest form of human enslavement the world has ever seen, they will learn to see themselves also as the kind of brutes who prevent their women from 'realizing their identity'. A man's daily struggle for his adoptive family thus acquires a new, sinister look. "

― Esther Vilar , The Polygamous Sex

11 " But even if men wanted to read the truth about their condition, women would still be the decisive factor. Though both men and women read, women are in addition the big consumers. Since women do most of the buying, most advertising campaigns are aimed directly or indirectly at them. Since most Western papers are financed largely through advertising, they cannot risk displeasing women by their editorial content; the day on which they do so, they would hear from their advertisers in no uncertain terms. Men would not stand a chance, even if they wanted to publish independent opinions about women, of being published in any medium addressing both sexes, as the great majority do.

The same is true of television, financed as it is in most Western countries by advertisers, promoters, publicity aimed at consumers. Here too the editorial content must pass female censorship. It is not pre-censored, of course, but subject to a censorship which functions on the principle that the producer is done for if the product does not sell. The producer is therefore motivated to avoid catastrophe by censoring himself. "

― Esther Vilar , The Polygamous Sex