Book Description
Esther Vilar's classic polemic about the relationship between the sexes caused a sensation on its first publication. In her introduction to this revised edition, Vilar maintains that very little has changed. A man is a human being who works, while a woman chooses to let a man provide for her and her children in return for carefully dispensed praise and sex.
Vilar's perceptive, thought-provoking and often very funny look at the battle between the sexes has earned her severe criticism and even death threats. But Vilar's intention is not misogynous: she maintains that only if women and men look at their place in society with honesty, will there be any hope for change.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Excerpted from The Manipulated Man by Esther Vilar. Copyright © 1998. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved
Chapter 1: The Slave's Happiness
The lemon-coloured MG skids across the road and the woman driver brings it to a somewhat uncertain halt. She gets out and finds her left front tyre flat. Without wasting a moment she prepares to fix it: she looks towards the passing cars as if expecting someone. Recognising this standard international sign of woman in distress ('weak female let down my 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 tyre herself because he knows - she is about thirty, smartly dressed and made-up - that she is not. Since she cannot find a jack, he fetches his own, together with his other tools. Five minutes later the job is done and the punctured tyre 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, apologising 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 tyre patched at once and she promises to get her petrol station attendant 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 tyre - 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 tyre 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 afterwards. 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 to be themselves what they are least of all - masters of the universe? How do women manage to manage to instil in men this sense of pride and superiority that inspires them to ever greater achievements?
Why are women never unmasked?
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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