Men who harass women are 'low status' males

[ArabellaScott]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-33613781

I found this fascinating.

'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.'

The key thing that I took from this was the feelings of low-status males are more invested in their status compared to other males than in their relationship to women.

It's something I think interesting to consider when thinking about MVAWG in general - males lacking a father figure is one of the risk factors for abusive men.

When men are abusive to women, are they actually acting out their feelings towards other men? This would explain why so many narcissists see women as ciphers, not actual humans, too.

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.

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.

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.

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.)

Thanks, Rethinking, that sounds really interesting. I can imagine those two systems being overlaid onto political systems, with the former 'success' being more rightwing and the latter 'virtue' being leftwing. I wonder what makes the difference between holding one or the other as more important or desirable?

Yes, because it's an attempt to signal to other males, rather than an audience of women. I'm not sure how conscious any of that is.

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

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.

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".

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! 😀

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.'

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

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

Yes, but if we're thinking in terms of a hierarchical mindset, it's not just 1st/2nd rate, is it? If a man is angling for status within a male hierarchy then women are generally going to be handy footholds for climbing to the top, so to speak.

Of course that was a huge generalisation! But it seems to me that leftwing politics is largely about that 'virtue' over success, and rightwing the opposite? I agree that generally right wing values/morals are not given all that much scrutiny and yes, one could perhaps say that 'success' is a virtue in a way.

Well let's suppose that you were correct and that leftwing politics was largely about virtue over success.

That wouldn't make rightwing politics the converse. This isn't physics. There's no requirement for the existence an equal and opposite force.

Sorry, bit of a diversion from the topic of the thread. But this is one of my longstanding bugbears. I think we can sometimes be seduced into feeling that something which makes a neat soundbite, or has a pleasing symmetry, must be true.

Messy reality isn't like that.

I could better have phrased that:
Let's suppose that premise is correct...

I really don't want anyone to feel got at: just to talk through these ideas.

In terms of status, I think the left and right would tend towards different prestige games, but that it's not the full picture.

To save people scrolling back, Storr's prestige games are "success" (involving symbols of achievement) and "virtue" (involving demonstrations of superior morality).

Right and left economy

On the face of it, right-wing economy places more obvious value on working hard and achieving success—i.e. the assumption of meritocracy. Under both meritocracy and capitalism, individuals are celebrated for playing the success game. If you get a promotion or an expensive car, it means you worked hard for it.

Left-wing economy is more to do with moving the collective towards success, and individual success games become less possible the further left you go. The virtue game has to take precedent, and in economic terms this is largely a display of political allegiance. The Soviets, the Corbynites and the Blairites played this game to differing degrees. Soviet citizens could gain status by grassing up their comrades for not being sufficiently party devoted; Corbyn supporters might freeze out members of their social group.

Conservatives and progressives

Neither of these political philosophies are inherently right or left, and I'd actually argue progressivism is hyper-individualistic, but they tend to be associated with current party values.

Conservatism kind of combines success and virtue, because your symbols of achievement are reflections of your good work ethic. In the US this position is associated more with Christianity, so it has another virtue angle there.

Progressivism does kind of combine both in the sense you might lose your success symbols if you aren't sufficiently virtuous (just look at all the ongoing employment tribunals) but I think it's much more about virtue.

There's also liberalism, but I don't feel knowledgeable enough to make a stab at where that might fit in.

Individual v collective

This is the part I haven't explored, which is whether you can play a collective success game. On the world stage, I suppose you can. So in that respect, a lot of left-wing economies would be success economies.

But as a general tendency, I think right-wing individuals would probably lean more success (while playing a less obvious virtue game at the same time) and left-wing individuals would tend to lean more virtue (with some shared glory in party success).

Obviously this is mostly hypothetical and as Perking has pointed out, may not translate so well to the "messy" real world.

It was a good point!

Conservatism kind of combines success and virtue, because your symbols of achievement are reflections of your good work ethic. In the US this position is associated more with Christianity, so it has another virtue angle there.

Well indeed. I think the attempt to divide political philosophies into these two complementary boxes (success vs virtue) founders utterly on religion.

Because religions, pretty much by definition, are the pursuit of "virtue" (ie demonstrations of superior morality). Some people will be publicly and competitively performing their virtue; and even those whose motivation isn't to gain status over others, but to "improve" themselves by their own standards, will be judged and accorded status by the folk who do think that way.

Rightwingers or conservative people have religions. (Often lots of it, loudly.) These folk are head-over-heels invested in the virtue economy.

Well indeed. I think the attempt to divide political philosophies into these two complementary boxes (success vs virtue) founders utterly on religion.

Although, the religion issue is not foundational to conservatism. In the States I'd say yes, pretty much every conservative will follow the virtue game of "I am an all-American patriot" (in itself a secular religion -- although notably this is rejected by some very conservative groups like Jehovah's Witnesses, the Amish, and the Westboro Baptist Church) and a lot of them also follow the specific brand of Protestantism that is so closely tied in with the Republican Party.

But outside the States I don't think this is necessarily the case. Old school morality may be used as a framework for modelling or judging virtuous behaviour, but not everyone is playing that game for status. Some of our Tory politicians are a good example.

I'm fascinated (and convinced) by the interpretation of what boasting about projecting femininity is about - someone was doing it within the last couple of days and it baffled me. Why would I want to project something as limiting, stereotyped, and ultimately pointless as 'femininity' anyway - I'm female.

More generally, I think there's a link there somewhere with my observation that a lot of the UK male commentators who shout most loudly about trans rights went to schools with a strong cadet corps tradition - something that can infect everyone in the school, members and non members, with an 'officers and men' status-driven worldview.

On the freezing out of group members for failing in the virtue game.

Shunning and expulsion is a feature of many religions. Behaviour of religious groups towards unmarried mothers (across place and time) provides good example example.

On displays of allegiance as the "virtue" within the political field.

Johnson gutted the top echelon of the Tory party of Remainers, creating the current vacuum at the top, in the name of political allegiance.
Trump demanded personal loyalty from Jim Comey and sacked him for withholding it. In fact Trump's office had a revolving door he got through people so fast for being insufficiently loyal.

Then, if we use Blair and Blairites as an example of leftwingers for our "virtue-economy" argument, how do we square that with Mandelson's "intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich" and Blair's very public promotion of meritocracy? (One eg among many: adding "Gifted and Talented" to the special needs provision in schools.)

This discussion of status, and of the success-economy and virtue-economy, is really fascinating.

But I don't think it fits very well along a left–right axis; and trying to contort it to do so will just mislead us.

Ex military do seem to be over represented in trans identifying cohorts.

Rigidly enforced hierarchies, macho culture.

I'm fascinated (and convinced) by the interpretation of what boasting about projecting femininity is about - someone was doing it within the last couple of days and it baffled me. Why would I want to project something as limiting, stereotyped, and ultimately pointless as 'femininity' anyway - I'm female.

Yes yes! This is 💡for me too!

More generally, I think there's a link there somewhere with my observation that a lot of the UK male commentators who shout most loudly about trans rights went to schools with a strong cadet corps tradition - something that can infect everyone in the school, members and non members, with an 'officers and men' status-driven worldview.

It does make a lot of sense that growing up with ideological zealotry is a potential indicator of future ideological zealotry.

A lot of Tumblr's most hardened pro-trans supporters are young Americans who have grown up in a country where 25% of the adult population is born-again evangelical Christian. It wouldn't surprise me if many grew up in those sorts of households.

I know someone (from the UK, not the US) who grew up very Catholic, completely abandoned the faith and took up the trans rights mantle. He admitted himself he had been a zealot when he was a teenager. Now he's extremely involved in trans issues.