theilltemperedclavecinist
It's incredibly frustrating. Heaven knows I'm miserable now possessed of a giant chip on my shoulder about class, and the accompanying inter-generational socio-economic disparities, but the world does not solely revolve around money. It doesn't matter how much money a woman has in the bank if she's alone with a rapist.
In fact, if rape is about power, a rape-inclined predator is going to be especially motivated to assert his physical power against a female victim who might otherwise be considered to have a higher social status than him. For him, it's a way of putting her back into her place. It's so blinkered that people ignore this aspect of class resentment. It's not as simple as rich=bad or poor=good.
Men who are unhappy with their own social status or achievements lash out at the women who are doing better. Thousands of women have observed that surely? It was most recently investigated as a phenomenon on computer game servers, of all things; online gaming environments are known to be misogynistic cesspits, but a study of male gaming behaviour dug into it in more detail. The academics found the male players who reacted most abusively to the presence of female players were the lower-ranked ones!
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Two researchers analysed how men treated women while playing 163 games of Halo 3.
Men who performed poorly in the games responded by being hostile to female players.
The male winners were mostly pleasant to other players, while the losing men made unsavoury comments to female players.
"Low-status males that have the most to lose due to a hierarchical reconfiguration are responding to the threat female competitors pose," the researchers, from the University of New South Wales and the Miami University in Ohio, write. "High-status males with the least to fear were more positive."
In Halo 3, players are anonymous and only interact with each other by voice a few times during the game. Most Halo players are men.
When performing poorly, players increased negative statements toward women and submissive statements toward the men who were winning.
"As men often rely on aggression to maintain their dominant social status, the increase in hostility towards a woman by lower-status males may be an attempt to disregard a female's performance," the researchers write.
Male players were thrown off by hearing female voices during the game. The researchers think their results suggest that young males should be taught that losing to women is not "socially debilitating".
The results also suggest that video games may be reinforcing gender segregation and potentially promoting sexist behaviours, especially troubling since so many "gamers" are teenagers.
From the BBC