Men who harass women are 'low status' males

It makes me quite dispirited that so many "second-raters" are in positions of leadership and power.

Related from a Times piece about Helen Mountfield and her appointment as the principal of Mansfield College after which she actively promoted the intake of students from state schools:

"Denying that it was social engineering, she recalled how she had once discussed with a judge positive discrimination for female lawyers wanting to join the bench. “He said, ‘You know, I think it would be dreadful for women. They would feel they were only there because they were women.’ And I said to him, ‘Does it undermine your self-confidence that you’re a white man? Do you ever think, maybe I’m only a judge because I’m a white man and if I was a woman I wouldn’t be here?’”"

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/state-pupils-flock-to-oxford-college-and-degree-results-soar-q96p7bxj0

Full text: https://archive.is/d0uxr

This has reminded me of the journalist Clare Hollingworth being asked if she had encountered professional hostility from men. 'Never from first-class men. It is only the second-raters who are scared of being outclassed by a woman.'

Surely the test is, as Bentham said, the most happiness for the greatest number of people? Made me look him up on wiki. A long time ago, but we could do with a few more guys like him around now.

Bentham defined as the "fundamental axiom" of his philosophy the principle that "it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong."[6][7] He became a leading theorist in Anglo-American philosophy of law, and a political radical whose ideas influenced the development of welfarism. He advocated individual and economic freedoms, the separation of church and state, freedom of expression, equal rights for women, the right to divorce, and (in an unpublished essay) the decriminalising of homosexual acts.[8][9] He called for the abolition of slavery, capital punishment, and physical punishment, including that of children.[10] He has also become known as an early advocate of animal rights.[11][12][13][14] Though strongly in favour of the extension of individual legal rights, he opposed the idea of natural law and natural rights (both of which are considered "divine" or "God-given" in origin), calling them "nonsense upon stilts".[3][15] Bentham was also a sharp critic of legal fictions.

That last sentence! 😀

Virtue games are more complex. People compete for prestige through demonstrations of moral goodness, presenting their motivations not as a desire for status, but as a demonstration of their superior goodness.

In fact you could drop this (perfectly expressed) paragraph into any place and time in human history, and it will be true for whatever that group of people deem to be "goodness".

I doubt it's going to map like that, though. Tempting as it always is go for neatness of alignment.

Today that there happen to be two news stories which each have an element of judgemental virtue-signalling.

One story is about 30p Lee and Farage, each whining in their separate ways that the UK is failing to be a properly Christian country, and that Christianity is failing to be their version of properly Christian. Both are trying to demonstrate "goodness", I think – for their particular audience's value of goodness.

The other story is about Jeffrey Donaldson, leader of the (Tory-allied) DUP, being arrested for rape. NI politics seems to me, for decades, to have been a big festering cauldron of virtue-signalling by all politicians. Again, the "virtues" are audience-specific.

Also I grew up an active church-going Christian: an arena where there can be a lot of performative "goodness". I didn't see any correlation to being left- or rightwing.

Further, some people have a strong "urge to punish" those who have failed to demonstrate correct goodness - Christian or otherwise. I'm not sure if that urge inherently belongs to a wing, although for some reason demands for capital punishment and harsher sentences are currently associated with being right wing.

This discussion has made me think I need to re-read Sheila Jeffreys' Gender Hurts on the topic of sex castes and see how it's holding up. I can't find the relevant part but I've a vague memory that Jeffreys introduces a new hierarchy of oppression in which transwomen outrank women and, somehow, transmen end up in a desperate place. NB: iirc, Jeffreys wrote this ahead of the steep increase in ROGD and young girls/women opting for NB or transgender status.

Quoting from a 2014 review by the deceased Gender Trender (available on some archiving sites).

Sex caste

In this book I have chosen to use the term ‘sex caste’ to describe the political system in which women are subordinated to men on the basis of their biology. Feminists have disagreed over whether women’s condition of subordination is best referred to in terms of ‘caste’ or ‘class’. Those who use the concept of women as a ‘sex class’, such as Kate Millett, are referencing their experience in leftwing politics and see the idea of ‘class’ as offering the possibility of revolution (Millett, 1972). Millett did, however, use the term caste as well, speaking of women’s ‘sexual caste system’ (Millett, 1972: 275). If women are in a subordinate class in relation to men, as the working class is in relation to the bourgeoisie, then women’s revolution can be conceptualised as overthrowing the power of men in such a way that sex class ceases to have meaning and will disappear as a meaningful category (Wittig, 1992). It also implies, as in left theory, that women’s revolution requires the recognition by women of their ‘sex’ class status as the basis for political action. Nonetheless, the term sex class can be problematic because it implies that women could move out of their ‘class’, in the same way that individual working class people could change their class position by becoming embourgeoised. The term ‘caste’, on the other hand, is useful for this book because it encapsulates the way in which women are placed into a subordinate caste status for their lifetime (see Burris, 1973). Women may change their economic class status with upward mobility, but they remain women unless they elect to transgender and claim membership in the superior sex caste. Both of these terms can be useful in articulating the condition of women, but the term ‘caste’ offers a particular advantage in relation to studying transgenderism. The very existence of transgenderism on the part of women demonstrates the stickiness of caste subordination. The marks of caste remain attached to females unless they claim that they are really ‘men’, and only a very significant social transformation will enable change in this respect.

Postmodern and queer theorists share with transgender theorists the idea that ‘gender’ is a moveable feast that can be moved into and out of, swapped and so forth. Gender, used in this sense, disappears the fixedness of sex, the biological basis that underlies the relegation of females to their sex caste. Female infants are identified by biology at birth and placed into a female sex caste which apportions them lifelong inferior status. The preference for biologically male children and the femicide of female infants, for instance, which has created a great inequality in the sex ratio in India and other countries, is based on sex and not ‘gender’. Female foetuses are aborted and female infants are killed because of sex, not ‘gender’ discrimination (Pande, 2006). Foetuses do not have ‘gender’ or ‘gender identity’, because the forces of a womanhating culture have not had a chance to affect the way they understand themselves. The inferior sex caste status of women is assigned with reference to their biology, and it is through their biology that their subordination is enforced and maintained through rape, impregnation, and forced childrearing. Women do not pass in and out of wearing ‘women’s’ clothing, as cross-dressers may do, indeed they may reject such clothing as inferiorising, but still suffer violence and discrimination as women. Though individual women may be successful in roles more usually abrogated to men, they are likely to be treated as interlopers and receive sexual harassment, as happened to the Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard (Summers, 2013). Her caste status was continually thrown in her face by hostile male commentators, politicians and cartoonists. Women do not decide at some time in adulthood that they would like other people to understand them to be women, because being a woman is not an ‘identity’. Women’s experience does not resemble that of men who adopt the ‘gender identity’ of being female or being women in any respect. The idea of ‘gender identity’ disappears biology and all the experiences that those with female biology have of being reared in a caste system based on sex.

Additional quotations from Gender Hurts:

https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/19344895-gender-hurts-a-feminist-analysis-of-the-politics-of-transgenderism

Will Storr refers to MN in his book, The Status Game, and claims (almost in passing) that it's rife here, and amongst women, it's played out in different ways (being a better parent and pass-agg or overtly deprecating other posters' decisions etc.).

Storr identified two ‘prestige games’ that all humans play to acquire status: success games and virtue games. Success games are red in tooth and claw and include symbols like cars or winning a promotion/salary increase. Virtue games are more complex. People compete for prestige through demonstrations of moral goodness, presenting their motivations not as a desire for status, but as a demonstration of their superior goodness.

Storr argues this can lead to pressure to hold ‘correct’ beliefs in order to maintain one’s social status. It's an interesting argument about how to undermine the status of, or pressure women who attempt to circumnavigate virtue games. (I need to read the book again.)

I never use the voice chat system in online games. I claim my microphone isn't working, and stick to typing only. It's just not worth the hassle.

The only time I ever considered using the mic was when we had another woman on the team, who was using the mic. However, she was French and ruthlessly kicking everyone on the team who fucked up, while issuing instruction after instruction in French. I was very proud to meet her playing standards, but I couldn't continue meeting them and try to speak French at the same time.

I game I’m actually a joint leader of a clan that has 60 members, sadly only one other woman in it. You have to be a certain level it’s not a top tier elite clan, they exist and you have to be in top 1% in the world stat wise, but it does have minimum standards. I am top 2% in one part of the game. All of those male gamers in my clan are brilliant, respectful, they are all really good at the game.

I have however gone in to LFG groups, which mean looking for group. As soon as they hear my voice they remove me from the team. Some say nothing and I’m booted some say I’m not gaming with a woman and some say it with hatred and a lot worse. I hope when they look at their completion stats they notice me, because I joined the team I may still be there and notice how I have done things like complete these really hard missions as a trio when they are activities designed for six gamers and even then some people can't complete them as a six.

I have had many a huge argument online with many a shithead gamer. There is a brilliant series on YouTube this is a link to one of this woman’s videos she covers many aspects in gaming.

Really interesting point. There's a common thread here, isn't there, running from loser incels to can't get a girlfriend to mediocre sportsmen looking to impress in female competitions.

@OneMorePlant that video is awful. Those men really don't care they are talking to another human being.

Ohhhh.

Is that where those lines and variants thereof come from? I've also seen those being used, and I've always been struck by the gap between how effective the male trans activist thinks the insults are, and how effective they actually are.

Interesting, men basically recreate the patriarchy in all male environments. Prison, all boys schools. Sports.

Low status males have the most to fear from a re-created patriarchy. They need a rung beneath them.

Oh, my first post is still there. I think it was my comparing my DD's transwomen (will that word be accepted instead of what I said?) university peers to low status primates to enble them to identify out of their low status.

Not sure what I did wrong but not worth rewriting. Just comparing low status males with primate behaviour as a scientific curiosity. Pah.

Just checked and you can request a copy through researchgate.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/371797903_The_Fragile_Male_An_Experimental_Study_of_Transgender_Classification_and_the_Durability_of_Gender_Categories

The article is as I would expect.

They don’t work as insults as, for an insult to hit home, it has to contain an element of truth. And we all know there is no truth in these statements.

They are just a daft, childish lashing out.

They can’t hurt anymore than it hurts when your five year old calls you ‘ the meanest mummy ever’ because you are making them brush their teeth.

See also incel behaviour.