The Proto-Feminist Male Lineage: Gynocentrism, Apotheosis, and the Road to Matriarchy

The historical roots of contemporary feminism do not emerge from a struggle against a patriarchal system, but rather evolve from a long-standing tradition of gynocentrism—a social and cultural order that positioned women at the symbolic and moral center of society. This tradition, far from being marginal or reactionary, was openly advanced by several influential male thinkers of the Renaissance and proto-Enlightenment periods. Far from resisting an oppressive male order, these men actively contributed to the elevation, sanctification, and even deification of womanhood.

Figures such as Symphorien Champier, Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, Guillaume Postel, François Billon, Juan Luis Vives, Baldassare Castiglione, and Erasmus of Rotterdam are central in this regard. Their contributions did not arise in opposition to a non-existent patriarchy, but instead amplified an already gynocentric ethos. These men were not disruptors of a male-dominated social order but were integral in further empowering the symbolic and informal power traditionally held by women. In doing so, they laid the ideological and metaphysical groundwork for what would later become institutional feminism.

Symphorien Champier's defense of women in his works, including La Nef des dames vertueuses, illustrates how the moral elevation of women was embedded in Renaissance thought. Agrippa, in De Nobilitate et Praecellentia Foeminei Sexus, systematically argued for the superiority of women, drawing from theological and classical sources to elevate the feminine as spiritually and intellectually superior.

Guillaume Postel took this further by integrating mystical and esoteric doctrines. In Postel's cosmology, the feminine principle was central to divine order. His belief in the coming of a feminine messiah and the establishment of a divine matriarchal order reveals how early proto-feminism was not about equity or justice but about sacralizing femininity.

François Billon's The Impregnable Fort of the Honor of the Feminine Sex (1555) exemplifies the militant and exalted framing of womanhood. The work defends not just the dignity of women but extols their martial valor, spiritual superiority, and social preeminence. Billon names Postel as part of a brotherhood of defenders of women, confirming the existence of a coherent male feminist network during the period.

Vives and Erasmus advocated for women's education not to correct an imbalance of power, but to enhance the social value and informal authority already wielded by women, particularly within the household and religious life. Castiglione, in The Book of the Courtier, presents an idealized woman whose power lies not in formal institutions, but in her moral influence and her ability to guide and refine the male.

These intellectuals did not resist an imaginary patriarchy. Instead, they were embedded in a gynocentric framework where informal female power was both acknowledged and idealized. Their work aimed to reinforce this power by expanding it into theological, philosophical, and legal domains. Rather than seeking balance, they sought apotheosis: the sanctification and idealization of the feminine as morally impeccable, intellectually superior, and spiritually necessary.

This male proto-feminist tradition is the first stage of the ideological evolution that leads to contemporary feminism. The second stage expanded this elevation into institutional and philosophical domains, while the third stage—modern feminism—seeks to formalize total female dominance. By demanding parity or superiority in all formal domains (e.g., leadership, politics, law) while preserving exclusive informal privileges (e.g., custody, victim status, moral authority), feminism completes the transition from gynocentrism to matriarchy.

Thus, what is commonly described as a feminist rebellion against patriarchal oppression is more accurately understood as a continuation and culmination of gynocentric logic, initiated and endorsed by male intellectuals of the Renaissance. Feminism did not invert patriarchy because patriarchy, as a systemic structure of institutional misogyny, never existed. What it did was radicalize a tradition of female idealization—transforming it into a comprehensive ideology that seeks dominance under the guise of justice and equality.

This reorientation is crucial for dismantling the myth of patriarchy and understanding feminism as part of a longer civilizational arc of female deification, initiated not by feminist radicals, but by respected male humanists, mystics, and theologians.

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