The Modern Femme Fatale

Why Men Need a Moral Code to Behave Ethically

Niall John Brown

Comissioned by Heroine Student Magazine, University of Amsterdam, April 20th 2017

In North West England, dairy farmers used to have an old saying about women, it goes like this;

‘Women… You can’t live with them, you can’t live without them’.

This age old pearl of wisdom gets to the heart of every straight man’s dilemma. On the one hand, men love women. They have an insatiable need to please them, as the survival of their genetics depends on it.

On the other hand, it’s exactly this need that men have to please women, that gives women such power over them. Men themselves, rarely have someone who is desperate to do anything to please them. Women however, if they’re lucky, can use their beauty and charm to manipulate men. An ability that many may recognise in someone they know.

Traditional second wave feminist scholars like Gloria Steinem, maintain that women have been arbitrarily kept out of power throughout history. But ancient societies knew better than they did, that women have all kinds of ways of exerting their political will.

I’m talking here about the archetype of the ‘Femme Fatale’.

The femme fatale is a mysterious and beautiful woman who is able to manipulate men into doing things for her, often leading to their downfall.

This archetype appears independently in the different mythologies and literature of vastly different civilisations.

The Ancient Greeks had many such figures. Like the Sirens of The Odyssey, who sing a song so beautiful that sailors out at sea are drawn to it if they hear it, so they inevitably crash on the surrounding rocks and drown.

In Ancient India, the Hindu God Vishnu is able to appear in the form of a beautiful seductive woman called Mohini. He uses her to trick demons into giving her the elixir of immortality that they had stolen from the Hindu Gods.

The Hebrew Bible itself has several examples of Jewish Princesses, who precipitate the downfall of an otherwise noble king.

One strange example is the legend of Lilith the Demon Queen. She repeatedly appears in ancient Jewish texts as a demon enchantress and today has become an icon of Occultist and Wiccan groups. During the middle ages, it was thought that she was coupled with the Demon King, Asmodeus. And that together they would populate the world with hordes of demons.

All these mythological succubi serve as a warning against the power of feminine beauty. It’s not just mythological beings either. Throughout history there are examples of femme fatales, from Cleopatra to Marie Antoinette.

The Chinese have a great tradition of evil concubines manipulating the Emperor into doing evil things.

The most famous is Daji, of the Shang Dynasty. Her favourite invention was an oiled bronze cylinder suspended over heated coals. People who displeased Daji were ordered to try to walk along the cylinder, where they would invariably fall and be burned alive on the coals, which greatly amused her.

The existence of the femme fatale in film and literature presented a paradox to feminists writing in the 1970s. At the same time, she appeared to be both empowering and degrading to women. She had autonomy and independence from men, because she was able to use them for her own ends. However, she was also the villain in many of these stories and portrayed as evil.

Writers like Mary Anne Doane and Virginia Allen concluded that what the femme fatale signified was a male fear of a loss of control over women, and therefore it could only be seen as degrading to the cause for female empowerment.

However, it seems that the existence of such an archetype, recurring again and again throughout history, is evidence of an innate difference between the sexes. As these writers point out, it’s relevant that the femme fatale is threatening, not because she is female, but because she has chosen to reject the role of motherhood. Therefore any man’s attempt to gain her affection can only result in self harm.

Ancient societies told such stories not because they hated women, but because they believed that feminine beauty held a particular kind of power over men.

Evidence for this has been born out in actual scientific research. Taiwanese psychologist Wen-Bin Chiou decided to create a study to test if the sight of an attractive face actually inhibited a man’s ability to think clearly.

For this study, Chiou took 74 heterosexual men.

They were then divided into two groups, the first group were shown pictures of women that had previously been rated as very attractive. The second group were shown pictures that had been rated as unattractive, and they were told to place them in order based on their good looks.

For completing the study, participants had been told they’d receive $4 in payment. But at the end when they collected the money, they were given an extra 50 cents. The aim of the study was to see how many men would be honest enough to return the money. It turns out that out of the group who had been shown attractive pictures, only 54% of them returned the money, as opposed to 74% of the group who’d been shown unattractive pictures.

What does this mean? That seeing a beautiful girl will make men do bad things? Wen-Bin Chiou’s theory is that the sight of attractive features can cause men to lose their self control. So when they’re presented with things they want, like free money, It’s harder for them to say no.

If this is the case, how can men hope to resist such charms?

In all kinds of societies throughout history, different codes of conduct were reached to try to reconcile a conflict between the two genders.

A social contract is made where women are given protected and privileged status. They are valued and provided for by the males, and in return they agree to bear the children for the next generation.

The femme fatale is likely seen as immoral because it is precisely a breach of this social contract. A breaking of a code of conduct.

One such code of conduct, developed in early Medieval Europe in the 12th Century.

It started in the French noble courts and later developed into the subject of many Romance novels.

Today this code is known as ‘chivalry’.

While it’s depiction in romantic literature may have been mostly fictional, it’s idea has developed over the years into a general social etiquette that is specifically western. It turned into the idea of gallantry, and behaving like a gentleman.

This attitude in a society is necessary because we know that men are capable of great evil towards women. When communities are gripped by terror and mass hysteria. They tend to project their fears onto the weaker members of the community, who are often female.

The most famous case of this happening are the Witch Trials of early modern Europe. They continued for decades and up to 60 000 people were executed. It’s estimated that around 85% of those killed were women.

But why is this? From an evolutionary perspective it makes very little sense. Men depend on women for their survival so why would a mass hysteria of this kind result in their persecution?

A deeper analysis of the witch trials may offer an explanation. Historian Lyndal Roper gives many examples, explaining that rather than a conflict between genders, the witch trials were really a conflict among women themselves. She points out that many of the accusers during the trials were also female. And that they tended to accuse midwives who had had contact with their own children. Her explanation is that elderly women’s fears about their health were projected onto others.

Other explanations are that elderly women were targeted because they were the least useful members of the society, being unable to bear children. Another scholar, Barstow, points out that there were also many young women targeted and that this may be because this provided the elderly men of the Clergy with the opportunity to kidnap and rape the accused.

I want to suggest that both the femme fatale and this kind of persecution, are reflective of the destructive power that resides in men. The fatale is an individual, and she is capable of causing men to destroy themselves, but when a society’s moral codes break down, this same aptitude for destruction can be turned against the gentler sex.

The idea of chivalry was a way of dealing with this destructive tendency. Where masculinity is refined and channeled towards protection of the weak and the innocent.

The whole notion of chivalry came under attack by the suffragettes of the 1910s in Britain who viewed the idea as demeaning to women and resulting in their exclusion from positions of power.

What has resulted since then and the sexual revolution of the 1960s, is that western societies have traded the idea of gallantry, for an ideology that states that men and women are exactly the same and should be treated as such.

The sad thing is that like most of the ambitions of the 1960s baby boomers, they ended up doing the opposite of what they wanted to achieve. Gloria Steinem and others, made their careers by criticising the way that magazines like Playboy overly sexualised girls.

Contraceptives meant that now women could be ‘sexually empowered’ meaning that they could sleep with whomever they pleased without getting pregnant or facing social stigma. A woman needs a man ‘like a fish needs a bicycle’ in her words.

In the culture that exists today, young people are encouraged to seek short term sexual pleasure, instead of resisting and searching for long term stability. While girls are more sexualised than at any point in recent history. Modern Western societies have become what their ancient predecessors warned against in so many ancient tales. A place where the malevolent qualities of both sexes are able to bring out the worst in each other.

Most men today, like the idea of behaving like a gentleman. It’s something they often aspire to be, something they admire. This is because they recognise that behaving in a civilised manner is a better way to live, but they often do not do so, usually because they are unable to resist the temptation that this culture offers.

The values of gallantry and gentlemanliness that have for so long been dismissed by a certain generation of feminists, are actually a great alternative to the current mental state that exists in our culture. And they do not have to be in conflict with the ability for women to be empowered and make their own choices as men do. But only if it is recognised that masculine and female qualities exist and will remain present for the foreseeable future.

It may offer a better way for men to resist their own impulses, and thereby resist the impulses of the Femme Fatale.