Esther Vilar - The Manipulated Man

ESTHER VILAR was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She studied medicine and sociology before becoming a writer. She followed the world-wide success of The Manipulated Man with two more books about the relationship between the sexes, the novels The Mosquito , The Mathematics of Nina Gluckstein and The Seven Fires of Mademoiselle and numerous plays, including The American Popess , Speer, and Jealousy .

Also by Esther Vilar from Pinter & Martin:

The Polygamous Sex
Speer

www.pinterandmartin.com

Esther Vilar

Pinter & Martin

The Manipulated Man

First published in Germany as Der Dressierte Mann by C. Bertelsman Verlag 1971 First published in Great Britain by Abelard-Schuman 1972 This edition first published by Pinter & Martin 2008

Copyright Esther Vilar 1971, 2008

The right of Esther Vilar to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patent act of 1988

ISBN: 978-1-905177-17-2

Introduction translation Martin Wagner 1998
This edition revised by the author.

Based on an original translation by Eva Borneman and Ursula Bender 1972

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publishers consent in any form of binding or cover than that in which it is published and without similar conditions including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Set in Garamond

Printed in Great Britain by
CPD, Wales

Pinter & Martin Ltd.
6 Effra Parade
London SW2 1PS

www.pinterandmartin.com

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 all those fortunate enough to have lost their market value because they are either too old, too ugly, or too ill.

themanipulatedman

Over thirty-five years have passed since the first publication of my book The Manipulated Man a pamphlet written in great anger against the womens movements 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 humor.

I would like to take the opportunity presented by the reissue of my book to answer two 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 todays 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 criticize 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 will also disappear.

After all, it is well established that women make the majority of purchasing decisions.

However, I had also underestimated mens 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 behavior 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: todays men need feminists 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 animalistic instincts.

Therefore the most aggressive Womens Libbers find themselves in the strange predicament of doing more to maintain the status quo than anyone else. Without their arrogant accusations the macho man would no longer exist, except perhaps in the movies. If the press didnt stylize men as rapacious wolves, the actual sacrificial lambs of this mens society, men themselves, would no longer flock to the factories so obediently.

So I hadnt 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 my subsequent writing and even for my private life violent threats have not ceased to this date. A woman who defended the arch-enemy who didnt 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, doesnt it, that someone who did not want to take part in the canonization of her own sex is also opposed to equal wages and equal opportunities?