La traduction française de ce texte est disponible ici.
SAPPHOTROPHY
by Votary
What is Sapphotrophy?
Well, it’s a neologism, of course. Since I coined in, in looking for a way to get across what I consider to be a key element of the Sapphic lifestyle as I have seen it described by the great expositors, I guess I will try to explain it!
“Sappho” needs no explanation here. The adjective trophic, meaning “having nutritional habits or requirements” in combination with it gives a means of describing the ecology of the energy system by which the state of “Gynarchy” is distinguished. Sapphotropic lifestyle involves the presence of a level of primary energy producers and one of consumers, the same as in all food chains. In this case, the primary energy producers are the males who through their labor convert raw materials into forms useable to the consuming caste, who are the ‘femmes’ who operate the levers of power in a Sapphic society. To function efficiently as a primary producer requires of the male a learned capacity to adapt their identity to a broader spectrum than the simply human. In the same way that plants convert sunlight through photosynthesis, in accord with the teachings of the expositor Aline d’Arbrant, the male must make an identity for himself as vegetable, capable of the basic transposition of energy into matter by means of the psychic control exercised by the femme for whom they produce. In a way similar to the alchemic process, the male is capable of turning his physical toil into goods useful to the consuming caste, and equally, able to turn his physical energies into a psychic commodity which that same caste can harvest and utilize. This is the theoretical goal and end point of the Sapphic vision of gender relations, but of course there is a large gap between the vision and it’s actualization.
And it’s exactly the nature of that gap that calls forth the need for this forum, as a place wherein the tangible evidence of how this multi-leveled transmutation (of society, of individuals, of systems) can be effected. All of us who can provide some concrete examples of the working knowledge of the mechanics of the craft must needs communicate them to others, so as to create a spiral of knowledge which in the same manner as the vortex, gains more and more energy as it spins. Spinning the web of Wytched Wisdom…that sounds like a good title for another entry here!
I shall expand upon the subject of this transmutation at another time.
Who is Aline d’Arbrant
(and why does it matter?)
The Queen of Gynarchic Theory
Who, indeed, is Aline d’Arbrant? At one time it was necessary only to enter her name into the Wikipedia index for the English speaking person to receive the answer to this question. Interestingly, that page was removed in April of 2009, through summary decision of a certain administrator going by the name of “julian”. The reason given, if you go to the page noting this deletion is , quote …Not notable. Promotional….unquote. Leaving aside the fact that there are tens of thousands (or more?) of wikipedia pages definable in exactly the same manner, the deletion of the english page describing the person whose works are the ne plus ultra of Gynarchic theory must be seen for what it is: an effort to suppress and contain all discussion of what alternatives exist to the current monoculture of patriarchy which oppresses all genders, all classes(excepting those on the pyramid tip of parasitical power) and all ages. is it worthwhile and necessary to recreate the suppressed information? I think so, and will do it by translating the page which still exists on the French edition of wikipedia, about this question of “who is Aline d’Arbrant.?” With apologies in advance for my non-professional effort, here is that translation…..
“Aline d’ Arbrant, French writer, born in Nancy in 1952, author of The Gynarchy. She, was a close companion of the American Valerie Solanas whom she met frequently in the United States after her exit of prison. She is the main theoretician of Gynarchy, the extremist feminist philosophy not to be confused with Gynocracy (women exercising power) or matriarchy (descent through the maternal line).
The Gynarchy of Aline d’ Arbrant advocates the absolute power of women, in which, according to her, a Golden age of Sapphic society would be recreated, where women would no longer require males even for procreation or any form of sexuality; in turn the male element of society would find happiness by serving the Lesbian sorority. These ideas are displayed with clarity and conviction in the main theoretical work of d’Arbrant: Gynarchy , already translated into English and Italian.
Aline d’Arbrant, an original member of the French group Circle of Omphale, and the swiss Gynarchy Club, is founder of the association Gynarchy International which has as it’s mission the broadcast Gynarchic ideals worldwide.”
Clearly, that submission is as much or more to do with the questions ‘What is Gynarchy?,” and what has been the role of Aline d’Arbrant in promoting it?, rather than much of a biography of the person who bears the name. But that in itself can be seen as a reflection of the person Aline d’Arbrant, as one can be sure that she herself would have been the author of said entry. So we can be safe in saying that Aline d’Arbrant is a woman for whom the questions “what is wrong with our society?” and “what can be done to right this?” are the defining motifs of her life. We would also be safe in supposing that she is a woman who regards men as intrinsically incapable of being ‘human,’ and therefore worthy of contempt. Since we too know that she is not a person who would be content to merely create for herself conditions in which she could be personally free of the ‘wrongs’ of this society we all live in, we must imagine that she is vitally interested in the project of making other women feel that same contempt. That can be inferred from the quote “mission [to]… broadcast Gynarchic ideals worldwide.” So to further understand the mind of Aline d’Arbrant we must look deeper in to the question of what these Gynarchic ideals might be.
On the site Gynarchy.org, we can find some explanation as to what, in Ms d’Arbrants’ opinion, they are. “Lesbians are the natural leaders of the Gynarchic revolution. In all parts of the world where Gynarchy is growing, Lesbians are at the head of this revolution. The Lesbian Gynarchist with her castrated submale slave(s) is the very spearhead of this revolution. All the problems that now are threatening Womynkind will be solved when the Female has become the ruling sex. The first goal is evidently to put a stop to harmful and dangerous male activities – political, social, industrial, ecological, military… But Womyn will not exterminate the inferior male sex, there will always be a need for obedient submale slaves. In a Gynarchic society Womyn will live a life of ease and comfort and a large number of submale slaves will always be necessary to perform all the menial and tedious work at the bottom of society. The submale only need some education, hard training and in most cases castration to become useful to Womyn. And the subjugated and castrated submale will find happiness in his servitude, to serve, worship and obey his Female owner will be his greatest joy and pride! … A submale in a Gynarchic society will have no human rights at all. No human rights whatsoever. Every submale will be the private property of a female and she may use, or misuse, this property in any way she wants. No rights whatsoever for submales! Their status will be lower even than that of domestic animals!
I think with that added to the mix, we can suppose ourselves adequately informed of both the vision of the Gynarchic ideal which Aline d’Arbrant espouses and answer to a large degree the question “Who is Aline D’Arbrant.” Of course, it would be the easiest thing in the world to say that she is a woman who hates men, even to the point of a malevolent wish to do them injury. It seems also fairly clear that she loves women, in the Sapphic sense, and in the wider sense of wishing for them to have the privleges which accrue in the Gynarchic society she imagines. It is less clear whether she wishes that men should love women. “A female may feel affection for an obedient submale, she may even want to use him sexually, but this has nothing to do with love and the thought of a union between a female and a submale, or any other property of hers, is of course totally ridiculous.” Since they are clearly to obey all women, it must be considered whether this obedience comes from love or from fear. Most often, in the literary works of the author d’Arbrant, it is decidedly fear which the male is supposed to feel, but this could be interpreted as a literary troupe which has the purpose of supplying an erotic charge to those of her readers who find the issues(and games) of power to be a predominant focus of their psychological makeup. Scenes of aggression and even violence against another sex or same sex person are regularly exposed in many venues now without condemnation, and are often argued to be simply expressions of sexuality when given labels like bdsm etc., and not to be confused with ‘real life’ situations. So it should not present the ‘sophisticated’ and modern reader any difficulty to see the same troupes brought to bear in the Gynarchical fiction books of Aline d’Arbrant. But it does, often, and that may be as a result of the deep rooted social presumption of an inherent female “nature” which is benevolent (maternal) passive, and ‘well behaved’ in some fundamental sense that goes far beyond the silly public offerings that glorify women being ‘bad.’
It can be argued, therefore, that the only way of getting clear of this deep seated presumption of immutable female nature is to discourse from a position of such extremity that it cancels out the assumed behavioral predisposition by means of antithesis. Since almost all of our learned methods of social discourse is now grounded in a theory of dialetics which is seldom challenged or avoided, it could be nothing more than ‘normal’ for a Gynarchic argument to be of such type…putting together two extremes to form a synthetic position, eg. if the patriarchal system in which we exist is overthrown and inverted by means of a ‘matriarchal’ system in it’s place, perhaps one can look forward to the elimination of all excesses and abuses of either system. Is it logical to argue for an interpretation of the extreme Gynarchical vision of Aline d’Arbrant from this point of view? Would she be happy if our society was modified in such a way as to allow for liberty and freedom for all people? That is very hard to speculate upon, without further opinion direct from the source. But at least from all appearances, it would seem that d’Arbrant represents a position that is fundamentally close to that espoused by Valerie Solanas, in the famous SCUM MANIFESTO, a document which without much doubt goes so far as to call for the ‘elimination’ of males, and not in a way that precludes violence. Although her site pointedly gives inclusion to the actual existence of [sub]males when her Gynarchic society comes into being, they are not ‘in’ society, but rather, in relation to that society as utility objects similar to household appliances or methods of conveyance. In sum, it would seem to be of little or no importance to Ms. d’Arbrant whether men love women or not, just so long as they obey them.
Though this position would seem to preclude an acceptance, or even tolerance, of it’s extreme prejudice against all men, in fact, on that same website of Aline d’Arbrants’ are statements of support for that same position, from males who claim to be committed to the achievment of her Gynarchic goals. It must therefore, at least be considered, that there is a possible value to the male potential in the radical Gynarchic vision, although it would be hard to know what it might be without much further evaluation than is goingto be done here at this time.
All of these facts are helpful not just in creating a profile of the author and theoretician Aline d’Arbrant, but also serve to give us some insight into the varied perspectives assumed by the “Womyn” for whom patriarchal society is unacceptable, and who seek its destruction in order to replace it with something which reflects their belief in the right of women to live free of it’s shadow. I want to write more about that theme once I finish this posting by stating, for the record, my own personal gleaning of the answer to the question “Who is Aline d’Arbrant, and why does it matter?”
Aline d’Arbrant is the expositor of a radical vision of humanity and it’s future which may or may not be correct. What matters about her vision, more than correctness, is that it is profoundly wholistic, cerebral and emotive at the same time. As such, it carries much more ‘gravitas’ than any academic or activist critiques of patriarchy, as well as providing a more complete prescription for an alternative, which due to it’s radical nature is not hazy, vague and easy to obfuscate for rhetorical purposes. It is, therefore, implacably present, no matter whether one wishes it to be or not. Therefore, the only way of dealing with her thought is to engage with it….whether for or against, whether one’s support is qualified or unqualified. I can predict with confidence that the Gynarchic vision of Aline d’Arbrant is not going to go away, no matter the ebbs and flows of it’s public profile at any given time. Suppression of her ideas will breed an inevitable counter-force, of which this space can already serve as small example. I have studied and absorbed the thought of Aline d’Arbrant, and I am comfortable both in critiquing and spreading it, because I recognize that it, and she are integral to any real or creative debate as to how to figure out and fix what is profoundly dysfunctional about the society we currently live in. Ultimately, I might hope that she would modify her position towards men, given that I remain fundamentally opposed to parts of that position as quoted herein, but I would not wish for her to do so unless and until a great measure of success has accompanied the campaign to reregulate society in accord with her Gynarchic principles, because it is the extremity of d’Arbrants position that makes it such a potent agent for delivering us all from one evil, even if we have to put ourselves into uncomfortable proximity to another one!
The Radical Vision of Aline d’Arbrant
Aline d’Arbrants’ oeuvre takes shape in style befitting the Queen of Gynarchic theory. The body of her output, literary, socio-political, philosophic, is hidden from view. Exactly as the female sexual organs remain ‘out of sight,’ the intransigent refusal of the patriarchal culture to allow voices of resistance access to it’s organs of media, Her message stays out of sight. While at first glance a seeming a defeat to the cause of Sapphic Supremacy, it is in fact a strategic victory; out of sight is not, in this case, ‘out of mind.’ The invisibility of the great Expositor d’Arbrants’ works means that there has been absolutely no corrosive adulteration of Her ideas by the minions of repression in the fashion so well described by Baudrillard. The ideas remain as She presents them: pure, unadulterated, unfiltered, potent, instead of the usual course by which all truly challenging protests are stifled, stupefied, and bowdlerized into a hollowed out simulacra of themselves that serves only to reinforce the prevailing system. As such the d’Arbrant corpus remains the only serious means by which the prevailing patriarchal programme can be met and defeated, and proper attention must be paid to keeping it unsullied and therefore virile in effect. How may this be achieved?
Just as a Queen bee is protected and defended in Her hive, the Royal d’Arbrant’s fecund corpus of ideas and inspirations must be protected and defended by a collective effort on the part of followers motivated to use the most skillful means to amplify the dissemination of Her majical invocation of Supremacy. While logic, rhetoric, persuasion and passion are traditionally tools employed, the message of the Gynarchic Queen is best communicated through the skill of submission. To learn complete obedience to Her Will, and by so doing, reducing the interference/resistance factors within the mediums of communication at large, actually outstrips all intellectual skills. The later can be used well only when harnessed to this capacity of obedience, by which Her acolyte/slave creates a resonant emptiness within themselves for the receiving and amplification of Her command. Like a signal put out at a pitch beyond the range of hearing, the amplified Voice of Gynarchic Authority will thus connect to converts who can be added to the stable of supporters engaged without reservation in the battle for mass acceptance of the Gynarchic programme.
The engagement of radical Gynarchic vision with the mainstream forces of liberal ideology always produces but one result; the impetus and power of the radical message is destroyed through mixing with gradualist, moderate, or reform minded feminism. As feminism finds itself absorbed into, and a part of, the patriarchal body of oppression, it is discardable as a force for change, and should be shunned by the real proponents of radical Femme Supremacy. Keeping the message free of reference to these types of faded and discredited streams of thought, is key to making the d’Arbrant message penetrate through the screen of lies and evasions employed by male culture. And penetrate it must, uncompromising organ of Her will the tool which attracts, mobilizes and psychically controls the army of Her slaves in the information war to come.
Sapphic subsumation of all male attributes, of power, of hardness, intransigence, forceful logic and preening display is useful for countering the infiltration of the usual fogs of deception by which the black magicians of patriarchy misshape the perception of Gynarchy as a “women’s movmement.” The dynamic between the Femme Supremacist and Her slaves is one that allows for a two way flow. From Her, the commanding Will that ensnares the subject consciousness and binds it in compliance, to Her, the masculine attributes that are the grateful offering from Her slave in exchange for his privilege of serving Her. A Gynarchic perspective involves the strategic adoption of the entire palette of attitudes, emotions, thoughts and actions available to the species as a whole…at the same time as reserving for the dominant Femme the exclusive privilege of giving full expression to the unique qualities of the feminine spirit! Deadly and delightful, wrathful and playful, lustful and demure, She applies and discards screens of appearance with the facility of the actor for whom all life is a stage.
This attribute of shape-shifting, gender crossing mood altering privilege is that of the Dakini/wytch, that ‘sky walker’ of the East who has been paralleled with the broom riding witch of the West but has been but little understood in the modern form She takes on. The Sapphic Wytch is the inheritor and outcropping of the Dakini/Wytch in the West; a vestigial re-enactor of the forgotten times before man learned the secret spells to free himself of the Wytch’s Way. In those time the imperative of the female was the Law in all of society, such that the male performed a function of value not dissimilar to the Gynarchic principles of the present moment – assistant, adorer, and sexual acolyte of the female of the species – entirely subservient to the majic of the Wytch. Returning us all to this sacred space is the benevolent goal of the visionary Aline D’Arbrant, by whose Superior Will the veils of patriarchal counter-magic thrown over humankind for so long are sundered and rendered void. By so doing, She liberates Female and her male adorer both, and proves the Gynarchic programme to be a ‘people’s movement, not ‘womens’ movement.
In this She is the continuum and refinement of the stream of French thinkers of the C20th whose presentation and enjoyment of paradox, of conundrum and contradiction were the leitmotif of their style and contribution. Synthesizing all of the major trends of these schools, then potentizing the brew with the invocations of the Wytch, d’Arbrant advances the threshold of theory past the previously unassailable walls of male dominated intellectualizing, and using a mixed force of art, science, majic and rhetoric renders the patriarchal palace pillaged, and denuded of power. In the same manner that Luce Irigarary strode forth to challenge the forces of orthodoxy, D’Arbrant came forward to lay down a gauntlet. It had been the hitherto successful tactic of the forces of repression to respond to such serious challenges by ignoring them, ostracizing the challenger, hiding the debate, and so on. But the challenge has not disappeared for all that, rather, through d’Abrant has been focused to utilize the very energy of the repression itself to build a tension which is rendering the puppets of the hegemonists, unsure, impotent, unable to respond.
This redirected energy is applied by stealth as fuel to the fire by which the Wytchs’ potion brews and strengthens. Like the widening drift of a scent that gets into the nostrils of people without notice, the will to power of the Sapphic Sorority makes its way into the subconscious strata of the male psyche, invading, inviting, inveigling it from the safety of the oppressive orthodoxy into the vicarious pleasure of becoming an appendage of the dominant Femme. One form of majic replaced by another, superior kind. One kind of bondage replaced by another, liberating one. For all that the Gynarchic vision of the male emphasizes restriction, immobility, denial and restraint, it’s counter-logic of liberation forces a new form of mobility, openness, irrepressible pleasure and problem solving ability onto the male slave. The previous paradigm of fat lazy helpless and stupid that is the norm of the male today is torn up and replaced with the new one, in which the male, to be suffered to survive, needs be fit, active, quickwitted and self reliant in service to his Femme Superior. Challenged rather than indulged, the lucky male slave is given a new set of goals and their achievement leads to higher self esteem and satisfaction. Instead of satisfaction in taking, hoarding, denying, he learns the superior pleasures of giving, accepting, allowing, receiving. All of which leads to the strengthening of his owner’s pleasure of directing, demanding, judging and destroying.
Returning us all to this sacred space is the benevolent goal of the visionary Aline D’Arbrant, by whose Superior Will the veils of patriarchal counter-magic thrown over humankind for so long are sundered and rendered void. By so doing, She liberates Female and her male adorer both, and proves the Gynarchic programme to be a ‘people’s movement, not ‘womens’ movement. In the Golden Times of Gynarchy, the matriarchal clans held up the roofs of society, with strong pillars of will and majic, and the people were all well kept and happy. Now once again, with the unfettered will and majic of the Expositor d’Arbrant, we can see on the horizon a space free of terror and the illusons that the black magicians used to supplant that Sapphic Supremacy back in time. Through Her Wisdom we are ready to move, forwards, backwards, sideways, in the dance that will bring us through the purifying fire and into the new awakening of the world.
Part Two of the two part essay written in tribute to the great Gynarchic theorist
Aline d’Arbrant, whose expositions on the theme of Sapphic society have begun
to motivate thousands of men to look to her for leadership in learning how to give up the vanity of personal identity in favour of the long forgotten joy of a meaningful life in servitude to their dominant Femme Sapphists.
Strategies and Tactics
for a Sapphic Seizure of Power
“In a Gynarchic society Womyn will live a life of ease and comfort and a large number of submale slaves will always be necessary to perform all the menial and tedious work at the bottom of society. The submale only need some education, hard training and in most cases castration to become useful to Womyn. And the subjugated and castrated submale will find happiness in his servitude, to serve, worship and obey his Female owner will be his greatest joy and pride! A totally subjugated submale is a happy submale! Non-Lesbian Women are not outside the Gynarchic revolution, certainly not! But Womyn who can find love and peace with other Womyn are probably more able to build a Gynarchic society where submales will be owned by Womyn and trained for service and hard work.” http://www.gynarchy.org/faqs.htm
To this end, there have been developments in science which point the way to the mass enslavement of males by simple yet efficient means that can spread like wildfire. The discovery of the female copulin is a milestone in the programme by which ordinary women can be empowered to place their spouses under total control without them even knowing. Because male authority has exclusive tenure in society, it is clearly first and foremost that authority which needs to be destroyed. How is this best done? The psychological underpinning of the male mind are the key to this question. How do men understand relationships? Relationships are based on, and descriptive of, power. If power is removed from men in their relations with others, their authority is eroded and the underpinnings of their psychic defenses crumble. How is this accomplished? If challenged intellectually, the male responds with aggression and even violence; the likelihood of reducing their status by this means is not great. However, when men are taken unawares into a cycle of behaviour that subtly strips them of power though at the same time not seeming to give it to Woymn, there is a much greater chance for a change in the power balance. Given enough time, every man can be brought to a state of submission to dominant females, and to giving up all power to them beyond the means of taking it back…the mastery of the male comes through having him give up his power voluntarily, then making it impossible for him to have it back. In this condition, his only choice is to accept the loss of his power and to adapt to new circumstances in which power will be solely exercised by Woymn over him.
There are two ways this can be achieved. Most common is the subtle expression of dominance by a Womyn who knows and uses their knowledge that men implicitly need to acknowledge their inferiority to Womyn. If you know for sure that it is man’s place to serve Womyn, there is no great difficulty bringing this about. One just needs be patient and slow with them, never challenging directly, but talking rather like to a child or animal, coaxing, stroking, reassuring, but always sure to be leading them further and further away from power, towards the place where they too late realize that they have given all away to their new Owners. This approach would, in the past have been overly consuming of time and energy, but with the simple application of the copulin technique, any male can be reduced to helplessness and servitude within a short time. And with broader use of the practice, the sharing of results and experience, along with the refinement of method will come quicker, easy results. And when they see their men so easily reduced in power and authority, they will also begin to look away from them as objects of desire and attention, turning instead to the empowered Femme as the natural love partner for their newly released erotic energies. This in turn will lead the disempowered male further into self doubt, passivity, and acceptance of exclusion from their former spouses’ favours. In this feedback loop of denigration, despair and denial of release, the former master will be unable to resist the erosion of his status and rights, and eventually accept his new role as (one of) Her kennel of degraded lackeys as the natural order of things. Devolution of the male psyche into the half-human, half-animal state of the L’ESCLAVE MÂLE which the benevolent vision of the Great ALINE ‘ARBRANT has made an imaginable and now achievable goal.
We are at present, humankind, caught in the grip of black magicians, who use their foul magic for the ruin and enslavement of all. We need a greater magic with which to combact this plague, and the all penetrating feminine magic of the Lesbian Leader ALINE D’ARBRANT is what we having been waiting for.
