Gynecocracy
Definition
1. Government by women.2. A society ruled by women.--AH
Female Domination [...]
Gynecocracy (1893) -
In 1893 a clandestine publisher brought out a flagellation novel with an entirely new twist: the hero/victim is dressed as a girl. This was Gynecocracy: A Narrative of the Adventures and Psychological Experiences of Julian Robinson (afterwards Viscount Ladywood) Under Petticoat-Rule, written by himself, in three volumes, Paris and Rotterdam, MDCCCXC111.
An ill-disciplined youth, having failed to settle down at school and having recently behaved indecently to one of the maids, is sent away to be educated with his three girl cousins under the control of their governess. Shortly after his arrival he is compelled to wear girls’ clothes as his normal attire. After much flagellation of all parties except the governess, and sexual interaction with all the women of the household, Julian marries one of the cousins, but continues to wear corsets and to remain under her dominion. A similar work, entitled The Petticoat Dominant, or Woman’s Revenge, appeared in 1898, possibly by the same author. --Peter Farrer http://www.petticoated.com/petpunessay.htm [Jan 2005]
Peter Mendes quotes from a prospectus of 1896 about the book, which confirms that it was appreciated as new at the time:
--http://www.petticoated.com/petpunessay2.htm [Sept 2004]“Gynecocracy” is not a common smutty little pamphlet devoted to the vulgar description, in coarse ungrammatical language, of common give-and-take love, but it is entirely based on a new idea, a fresh conception relating to a state of society that we may have heard about, talked about and whispered about; but we have never yet had this peculiar, pleasing, tantalising, salacious system of trained lubricity exposed before in print.
For many it will be a relaxation. The. famous Marquis de Sade found pleasure in humiliating female victims. Can it be possible that there are dainty, high-bred ladies who, gaily turning Nature's laws upside down, find sweet solace in the sufferings of a sweet youth, who becomes their victim, and is forced to be their toy, sometimes an unwilling one, subjected to their most extraordinary lewd desires and inventions? Is petticoat-government a desirable form of education for a raw youth of tender birth, and can he become a man, if brought up among girls, dressed in female attire with corset, high-heeled shoes and sixteen-button gloves, so as to destroy all outward signs of his sex?
What influence will this life of slavery have upon his sexual longings and future career? Can a man be of both sexes at once and change his nature, as he dresses either in masculine or feminine attire? All these questions relating to the sway of womanly government are here fully solved, among a series of adventures which for delicate handling, albeit full of real erotic and novel surprises, surpasses anything that has ever been published up to this day in any language. [p. 247]
I will give lengthy extracts
from the early chapters, up to the point when Julian is fully dressed as
a girl for the first time.
By this time I am thirty
years of age, and well aware it.
Home-staying youths,
some poet or wiseacre has said, have ever homely wit. Whether I have a
homely wit or indeed any wit, I do not know. I have never endeavoured to
form an opinion, deeming the question not to be one into which I could
hope to enquire impartially; in fact, one for my personal judgement. But
though I have been a home-staying youth, I have had experiences; experiences
of the world, that is to say, of woman, whom I regard as a complete epitome
of the world - and if any one, home-stayer or otherwise, has had experience
of her in all her moods and whims, and has passed through all the psychological
and physical gymnastics by which her varying caprices and lusts can conduct
his soul, his passions, and his senses, and still preserves a homely wit,
he must be an arrant duffer!
For Woman is a complete education.
By my own experience, I have reason to respect the petticoat and chemise, the drawers and long stockings, the high-heeled boots and tight corsets - and what they contain - and to believe that good may accrue to a young man being disciplined by a smart girl. This may be thought a very peculiar view.
To give one instance, a young man of my acquaintance was sent at nine years of age to a fashionable preparatory school for Eton, and was expelled eighteen months afterwards. It was considered futile to send him to another school. Three tutors successively resigned on the ground that he was altogether incorrigible. At a loss what to do, his guardians enquired in all directions, and answered innumerable advertisements of persons professing to devote themselves to the reformation of backward and refractory boys, until, at last, it was suggested by a friend of the family, who had had some German anthropological experiences, that the lad should be taken in hand by a lady.
The idea was astounding! A great, rough, strong boy of fifteen who had defied the discipline of private schools and tutors, and of specialists who devoted themselves to such characters, would never yield to a lady. The friend, a person of position and reputation, pledged herself that he would be completely broken in; she had known similar cases in which the plan she advocated had proved successful beyond all possible expectations. After protracted discussion, her suggestions were adopted. A pension was quickly found, The Grafin von ____ stipulated that the lad should be left absolutely under her control for two years, and at the end of that period he turned out a model of docility and obedience, courtesy, and chivalry, and with remarkable intellectual development and self-possession.
His friends acknowledged
with wonder and gratitude the marvellous transformation which the pretty
demure German Countess had wrought. Naturally, they were curious to ascertain
by what magic she had worked this miracle. I do not know whether they succeeded
in learning; probably not, as they were English; but having been through
the same kind of discipline myself, I possessed the key. When we met, we
accordingly compared notes, and he confessed that the magic was wholly
feminine. She had impressed him with the subtle and subduing influence
of sex, under which he was perpetually kept. She, as I guessed, employed
not tutors but maids, who,
notwithstanding his age, treated him in all respects as a child. She used
female clothing - first a girl's, then a young lady's, and made the use
of masculine habiliments, or even the desire for them, an offence of the
deepest dye.
She subjugated his rude male propensities to her softening womanly influence, to which he was compelled to do perpetual homage. She punished rebellion in the most ignominious manner, with the birch; and the same sharp instructor was used to brighten his wits, teach him his lessons, and enforce her precepts. I remember he made a particular complaint of the fact that, to his shame and disgrace, he was usually punished before girls. This he felt acutely.
He described his feelings to me upon the first occasion of his shocking exposure to a bevy of laughing girls. He was held down across an ottoman by a couple of buxom country lasses. The mere narrative made my blood boil and electrified me. He detailed his efforts to repress all expression of his sufferings, in which they revelled and gloried: how he writhed; how, by degrees, his fortitude vanished through stress of pain, whilst consciousness of the youth and sex of his beholders maddened him; how, ultimately, as the cutting strokes administered by the white round arm of a woman continued to fall with cruel regularity, he was obliged to abandon himself absolutely and helplessly. He could no longer withstand the sense of abject humiliation, the necessity for yielding unreservedly to his fair mistress. He spoke of the subjugation and the galling nature of the conviction that they had, despite himself, thoroughly mastered him. But, he added, he could have held out against a man; what sapped his strength was not so much the torture of the punishment as the sorcery of gender. It was the triumph of the Petticoat. He could at last have grovelled on the ground before these fair but relentless conquerors and have begged their permission to breathe.
Enough, however, of his experiences.
In the following chapters I purpose narrating my own adventures of like
kind.
Julian’s own story begins in a similar way. At the age of 14 he puts his hand under the skirts of a maid who is going upstairs, causing her to drop a tray. He is sent away to school, but leaves after two years, school not suiting his health. He is then sent to a country house belonging to his late uncle where his three cousins, Maud, 20, Beatrice, 18, and Agnes, 16, are being educated by a young French governess, Mademoiselle de Chambonnard. He admires them all, but falls in love with Beatrice. He meets Elise, Mademoiselle’s maid and another maid, Mary. He is teased in various ways by these women, and goes to bed with a sense of foreboding.
Next morning Julian wakes up miserable. He is alone among women. He fears
that he will be 'shorn of his manhood and made .
effeminate'. He resolves to assert himself and does so when, at breakfast,
Mademoiselle opens and reads two letters
addressed to him. He demands to see them, but is refused: they do not require
a reply, and he is not allowed to write or
receive letters without her permission. Later in the schoolroom his cousins
reproach him for being so rude and warn him that
he will 'catch it'.
“I suppose,” added Maud, “he has never heard of a riding whip. Mademoiselle has a horridly cruel little whip. Ay! How it . bites!" And she laughed.
“Or of the regime of the
stay-lace, or of fifty other ways young ladies have for breaking in refractory
boys", went on Agnes. “Never mind", in a tone of mock consolation, which
maddened me, “he will soon be initiated".
“She, whip me! At my age,
and before you, girls! You must be mad to think she would dare to do such
a thing. You are only laughing at me. I should fight. I am much stronger
than she is".
“You will back petticoats,
however,” said Maud. "You will find you have to submit to them. And she
is sure to punish you in front of us. You will not have many clothes left
to conceal your hidden charms: and if you turn out to have as nice a figure
in reality as you seem to have now, I shall get Mademoiselle to let you
pose for me as a model for an Apollo".
Beatrice advises him to submit quietly. Mademoiselle then enters:
“Now, Master Julian”, she
said, “you have to realize that I am your governess and that you are my
absolute slave. Don’t interrupt! From you I shall expect and shall exact
the most implicit obedience, and the most abject submission. You will tremble
hereafter at the mere rustle of a petticoat; by it you are to be governed.
If you are sufficiently foolish to continue your insubordination and the
ridiculous temper you displayed this morning, it will be the worse for
you”.
“Mademoiselle”, I broke
in, “I do not understand you; my father sent me here because I am too delicate
for school”.
“And too unruly for home. Too indecent!” (at which I blushed). “Too inquisitive! Too anxious to know what young ladies have under their petticoats”. (I was dumbfounded, and furtively glanced at the girls who were eagerly listening). “Yes! I know all about it. The petticoat will have its revenge now, and you will be under it in more senses than one for some time. Kneel down there at my feet”. (I hesitated, especially seeing the girls highly amused). “Kneel down at once”, she repeated, settling herself in her chair, and assuming a more erect attitude, “and put your hands behind you”.
His arms and ankles are strapped together and Mademoiselle slaps his face.
“And now, Julian, you shall
be deprived of your trousers. Take a long leave of them. When you will
see them again, I do not know; they teach you all sorts of resistance and
naughtiness and make you assume airs of ridiculous superiority which you
do not possess. We must make a girl of you. Elise, make him stand up and
take them off”.
“Oh, Mademoiselle! Oh, please
do not before you and the girls. Oh, don't -----”.
His trousers and drawers are removed.
My cheeks burned and I felt horridly defenceless.
“Now, Julian, how do you feel? To enforce your subjection to the petticoat, the emblem of the female sex, and to show your domination by it, you shall stand in the corner with one over your head until half-past twelve, when lessons are over. Elise, fetch one of my red flannel petticoats out of the soiled linen basket in my room”. Elise soon returned with the garment required. “Tie it together at the top---so! Now throw it over his head. There, now, he is under the petticoat! Put him in the corner; and at half-past twelve, Julian, she will come and take you to my bedroom, where I shall birch your bottom for you as smartly as ever a boy's bottom was birched”.
Julian remains thus trussed up in a state of great apprehension while the
class continues, with Beatrice getting a whipping
for blunders with her Dante.
A sort of mesmeric influence seemed to have crept into me from that intensely feminine garment which had been in such close contact with Mademoiselle's own person, and then so long over my head and face, as I stood disgraced in the corner. It seemed to have sapped my strength and all my powers of resistance, to have undermined my self-respect, to have rendered me contemptible in my own eyes; in short, to have completely emasculated me. I had felt my virility ebbing away during the hours I had stood with the red thing enveloping my shoulders, touching my eyes and nose and mouth, conscious all the while that it was a woman's petticoat which had been worn, and that a thing so essentially feminine had, willy-nilly, been forced upon me. I had gradually, step by step, to give in to the flood of feminine associations which rushed upon me, and yield by degrees to the power of woman. I was keenly aware that nothing could save me, that all opposition was useless and hopeless, and I was slowly drifting towards the knowledge that I must sooner or later abandon myself absolutely to it. I stood before Mademoiselle, cowed and humiliated, not so much at the prospect of the beating as at the sense of my own helplessness in her hands, because she was feminine and could therefore do with me what she liked. Whatever it was, I knew I had no power left to resist, and trembled at the inevitable acknowledgement of this fact to myself. She seemed the embodiment of triumphant womanhood as I was hustled into her presence, shaken and pulled about by another woman to be whipped by her.
Julian is now mercilessly birched by Mademoiselle.
At last she rose, and pouring some wine into a large Bohemian glass, she bade me drink; then, pointing to some clothes Elise had left behind her, told me to put them on.
I suppose the red grape juice made me defiant, for, on perceiving them to be a girl's dress, I protested. Mademoiselle simply said she was sure I should obey her. Strange to say, that was enough, and I complied; only remarking that for her sake I wished to be a boy. She smiled, and promised that I should tell her all about it after luncheon, in her boudoir. With her help, I then put on a chemise, long stockings, drawers, petticoats, a corset which would not fit, and I was buttoned up in a bodice. How strangely embarrassed I felt. But these feelings were swallowed up by a sense of disgrace when I found that outside all, I had to wear a pair of Mademoiselle's own laced drawers, the waistband being tied round my neck, and my arms thrust through the legs as though they were sleeves. These were fastened with garters at the wrists.
In that guise I was to appear before the girls at luncheon, in token of my subjugation and defeat, and of the rout and discomfit of my virility. Petticoats were difficult enough to put up with; this addition of a pair of drawers completed my abasement. However, the novelty and discomfort of the attire served somewhat to divert my attention from the intense humiliation I suffered, as did also the effort necessary to walk at all decently; for what with the high heels of the girls' boots, which buttoned high up my legs and which felt like mountains under them - and what with the agitation of my nerves and my soreness from the severe whipping I had received at Mademoiselle's hands, walking was no easy matter.
I blushed like a girl as
I felt the feminine garments against my legs and saw the drawers about
my arms. The delicate, minute, ladylike handkerchief, all laced, and of
no practical use whatever, which I had to hold in my hand, made me feel
really girlish; and when ushered into the luncheon-room and introduced
to my cousins as, “Miss Julia, instead of that very naughty boy Master
Julian, who has been sent home", I began positively to wonder whether I
was not actually a girl. They made great fun of me in a quiet and exasperating
way, saying the sleeves reminded them of a bishop under his wife's thumb,
and Agnes slyly suggested a cushion when she noticed that it hurt me as
I sat down.
The bishop is of course Bishop Proudie in 'Barchester Towers'. Julian now
upsets Beatrice’s wine glass over her frock, for
which she is ordered to slap his face.
Thus it was that I soon found I had more governesses than one. Mademoiselle
ruled by a mixture of sex and force - force
which her sex made irresistible; but I could evade and escape her to some
extent. Beatrice ruled by love, and her pains
were sweet, though sharp...
This brilliant dissertation
will be continued in a later issue. The quotes from the book demonstrate
that the power of petticoat discipline has been known since the nineteenth
century. Few better descriptions of the torments of a humiliated male under
petticoat rule have ever been written.
--http://www.petticoated.com/petpunessay2.htm [Sept 2004]
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