The title means "Taboos at the Turn of the Millennium".

This book can be described as a summary of Esther Vilar's most important essays. She wrote it in 1998, looking back upon her own publications in the past three decades. It's so convincing it can almost be called the "world formula" in the fields of psychology and sociology. It's an eye-opener, enlightening, also witty, entertaining, and some passages will shock you! It deals with many different subjects, like religion, crime, the battle of the sexes, the modern phenomenon of "beautism", and a phenomenon the author calls "pleasure in non-freedom." What fascinates me most is the author's ability to explain the logical links between her theories in the different chapters; that's why you can only understand each chapter when you see it in the context of all the others - when you see the book as an integrated whole.

Too bad it's only available in the original German (BTW there's a new version now titled "Denkverbote : Tabus im 21. Jahrhundert") and in Spanish ("Prohibido Pensar"), but, seemingly, not yet in English...

...you American people (especially males) don't know what you're missing!

The title (a literal translation of "Denkverbote", which is the original German title) means "Taboos at the Turn of the Millennium".

This book can be described as a summary of Esther Vilar's most important essays. She wrote it in 1998, looking back upon her own publications in the past three decades. It's so convincing it can almost be called the "world formula" in the fields of psychology and sociology. It's an eye-opener, enlightening, also witty, entertaining, and some passages will shock you! It deals with many different subjects, like religion, crime, the battle of the sexes, the modern phenomenon of "beautism", and a phenomenon the author calls "pleasure in non-freedom."

Here are some of her theses:
- Societies want crime.
- Religion is dangerous.
- Most people don't really want freedom, but are naive enough to believe that the non-freedom they want is actually "freedom."
- Feminism, the way we know it these days, doesn't work because it's inconsequent (as long as women do not support men).
- In the field of love, stupid people have it easier than intelligent ones (and they fool the intelligent ones).
- Both women and men, and also their children, could be better off if everyone only worked five hours a day (which is possible; and Vilar explains *why*!), because both genders would not only have equal rights, but also equal duties and responsibility.

What fascinates me most is the author's ability to explain the logical links between her theories in all the different chapters; that's why you can only understand each chapter when you see it in the context of all the others - when you see the book as an integrated whole.

Too bad it's not available in English - beside this Spanish translation, it's only sold in the original German as far as I know (which is the language in which I read it)...

...but in the U.S.A. there are millions of Spanish-speaking people, so "Prohibido Pensar" might make Vilar's theories popular in the States.

Esther Vilar made women all over the world furious when she dared to criticize her own gender in her classic "The Manipulated Man" in 1971 - is it any wonder "Prohibido Pensar", as well as most of Vilar's other work, is not available in English, the world language number one...?

Enjoy this tremendous book (and benefit from it in your daily life!) - if you have the guts...

The truth contained in this book is the most difficult thing for a man raised in the US to accept. Every cell in your body will recoil at first reading. You will think of every excuse and exception imaginable to not accept the simple truth presented in the pages. You will never get much support from either your male or female friends; However, if you dare to accept what is plainly in front of your eyes, you will be rewarded with a life free from bondage and filled with self esteem. I recommend this book very highly.. Read it at least once a week for a year. Slowly but surely, you will see the truth everywhere around you. You will wake up to many unpleasant facts about society but also realize the many wonderful choices available. My life has gotten better ever since I read this book 5 years ago. Best of luck!

I first read this book in 1972 when a recently divorced friend gave it to me. Needless to say, I and other friends bought multiple copies and gave them to men and women to read. All the books given to women were distroyed. Esther Vilar caused quite a sensation with The Manipulated Man. Just read a book called Sex-Ploytation, sub title, How Women use Their Bodies To Extort Money From Men, that seems to take up where Esther left off 25 years ago. Anybody that loved Esters book will love this one. It is very powerful and definitly writen for the oppresed men in this pro feminist anti-male 90s.

Vilar's polemic slashes at the fabric of society. She states clearly and simply what many men and women suspect but dare not say: that men are women's slaves, not the reverse. Anyone interested in the gender wars must read this book. Anyone in Women's Studies, who truly< wants to study gender, must read this book, if only to be exposed to another point of view. True enquiring minds will find this book astonishing. Dogmatic minds will, of course, not even bother to read it.

Is Vilar's version of things correct? Is this the truth? For me, it is as much the "truth" as anything MacKinnon, Dworkin, Steinem or Faludi might write. The difference is that radical feminist writers receive national exposure and speaking engagements for their radical views, while Vilar, equally radical, receives death threats and near-anonymity. If men are really the oppressors then why can MacKinnon and Steinem publish and speak openly, while Vilar is thoroughly suppressed? ....

... Vilar's work, far from reinforcing traditional stereotypes, blows them wide open. She characterizes men as industrious and intelligent, but dupes. She writes that women are vapid and lazy, but also in command. It's enough to set Dworkin groupies AND conservative senators foaming at the mouth. Far from bolstering "traditional" viewpoints, it offends dogmatists on both sides of the fence.

The only unfortunate aspect of the reprint is that the material is dated. Although it is possible for a sympathetic reader to find present-day examples and view contemporary phenomena through her lens, it's annoying that the examples in the book seem to apply better to the 1950's than the year 2000. There is a new foreword by the author in which she states that nothing has changed in thirty years, but I would have preferred that she had updated the book to clearly demonstrate that argument, rather than leaving it to the reader. Vilar claims that the changes brought about by Women's Liberation are superficial, and she has a chapter on the topic, but the rest of the book hasn't caught up. As such, her work is less convincing than it could be.

Love is composed by two totally different impulses: sexual attraction and protection, the mistress and the mother. For the anti-feminist Esther Vilar, those two functions are incompatible. That's why men should have the right to have (at least) two women.
A disaster for women, a cause for their inferiority? Not at all for Esther Vilar. Women should not be fooled. They have the power, first, to bear children (and to be protected by the father), and, secondly, to be sexually attractive and hold the men in their spell. It's a win-win situation. Women should use their own weapons and not try to mimic the masculine world, like the feminist movement is doing.
A beautiful reasoning, but practical? For me not.
The proposition could only work when men and women are on equal footing (education ...). This is actually not the case everywhere and every time. Secondly, there are other instincts, like jealousy. And thirdly, there are practical barriers. Men should have enough means to support two or more women. Most men who have the means, have a mother for the children and (a) mistress (es) (not always openly, by divorcing for instance). And finally, if some men have more than one woman, some men will have no woman: the Malthusian nightmare : no money, no honey.
A bold suggestion coming from ... a woman, told in an amusing and alluring style.
A book to recommend.

In Esther Vilar's first book "The Manipulated Man" (1971/72) she said women dominate men while men are taught to believe it's the other way round! It's her most popular book.
But IMHO "The Polygamous Sex" is even better cause it's less polemic and more sober. People who believe "The Manipulated Man" was a joke will take Vilar's theses - which she maintains 100 % in this second book - more seriously cause this time she does not insult women the way she does in the first one. And even though you cannot call the book new (it was written in 1974) it is not dated at all.
Besides, the book explains brilliantly how massively men get brainwashed by feminism in the mass media.
In the original German both books were published in an omnibus volume along with Vilar's third one titled "Das Ende der Dressur" ("The end of manipulation") which describes how things could get better in the future.
Such an omnibus volume should be published in English as well. This could be of great help especially to American readers cause the American man is probably the one who gets fooled, ripped off and brainwashed by women more radically than any other male in the democratic western countries.
Reading the whole trilogy an American reader might almost feel like Keanu Reeves in "The Matrix" after swallowing the magic red capsule...
By the way, people who love witty and rousing essays should read *everything* this sharp-tongued woman has ever written - not only the stuff that deals with the situation of men and women in society.