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.

The threads about Jeffrey Donaldson are a good reminder that the religious virtue-economy is alive and well in the UK to this day. (As in, posters talking about it, not practising it.)

Also, other religions than Christianity are available.

I follow a fair few girl gamers on tiktok, where the entirety of their content is clips of them kicking ass and getting abuse from men/boys.

There's also one who uses a voice changer and compares the responses when she beats them as male/female which is really interesting/depressing to watch.

I notice when she's 'male' she's never told to get back in the kitchen to make them a sandwich....

Also, other religions than Christianity are available.

Of course, but the virtue game would play out differently depending on the size of your faith community and how well tolerated your religion is by wider society. A Muslim or an Orthodox Jew might attain a high status within their community but face a lot of negative status outside of it.

In the US, Christianity is so widespread that playing the virtue game has much bigger payoffs. It might even lead in to the success game, e.g. networking and career opportunities.

(Incidentally, the "prosperity gospel" could be seen as a combination of the two prestige games -- show virtue and God will give you material success)

Well that was enlightening @OneMorePlant

Yy re "prosperity gospel"! Win-win!

I could have told them this decades ago. At school I was exclusively bullied by males. But never by high-status males who didn’t need to boost their own position. Always by low-status males who were looking to assert themselves by punching down.

Also these low-status males never tried to assert themselves by bullying high-status females, who were desired by the high-status males and would be defended by them. They only bullied the low-status females who the high-status males weren’t interested in.

In hierarchies, people are more aggressive to those on the same level as themselves because they see them as the competition, and deferential to those higher than themselves.

Men who perform poorly are hostile to females as an act of redirected aggression, because they can't retaliate against the males who beat them. They see women as 'other' not equals, and use them as a scapegoat for their frustration and feelings of inadequacy.

''Displaced aggression, also referred to as redirected aggression, occurs when an animal or human is fearful or agitated by external stimuli, a provocation, or perception, but is unable or unwilling to direct their aggression toward the stimulus''
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Displaced_aggression

George Monbiot:

A large and impressive study of children’s progress into adulthood found that those who display bullying and aggressive behaviour at school are more likely to prosper at work. They land better jobs and earn more. The researchers claim to be surprised by their findings, but is it really so remarkable? The association of senior positions with bullying and dominance behaviour will doubtless come as a shock to many.
This is not to suggest that all people with good jobs or who run organisations are bullies. Far from it. It’s not hard to think of good people in powerful positions. What this tells us is that we don’t need aggressive people to organise our lives for us. Neither good leadership, nor organisational success, nor innovation, insight or foresight, require a dominance mindset. In fact, all can be inhibited by someone throwing their weight around.

Whether in game theory or the study of other species, you quickly discover how the dominance behaviour of a few can harm society as a whole. For example, a study of cichlid fish found that dominant males have “lower signal-to-noise ratios” (sound and fury, signifying nothing) and counter-productive impacts on group performance. Anything sound familiar?
A win for bullies is a loss for everyone else: their success is a zero-sum game. Or negative-sum: the first study I mentioned also found that school bullies are more likely to abuse alcohol, smoke, break the law and suffer mental health problems in later life. But the bullies’ triumph is also an outcome of the dominant narrative of our times: for the past 45 years, neoliberalism has characterised human life as a struggle that some must win and others must lose. Only through competition, in this quasi-Calvinist religion, can we discern who the worthy and unworthy might be. The competition, of course, is always rigged. The point of neoliberalism is to provide justifications for an unequal and coercive society, a society where bullies rule.
It’s a perfect circle: neoliberalism generates inequality; and inequality, as another paper shows, is strongly associated with bullying at school. With greater disparities in income and status, stress rises, competition sharpens, and the urge to dominate intensifies. The pathology feeds itself

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/mar/30/playground-politics-bullies-competition

yeh, this is why some people have two different personalities on the go at once. one aggressive cold shouldering or belittling personality for the people at their level and one fawning vivacious tinkling personality for those who they perceive to be above them. So ridiculous.

It is interesting that comparison with other apes invariably ignores the ones closest to human DNA: Benobos are matriarchies, without bullying and heirarchy. They run by cooperation, and to mutual benefit of all, by using the pleasure of non-reproductive sex as a way to pacify, to repair squabbles, and to keep everyone happy. (It is not unlike the mutual grooming for fleas, which many species carry out, for similar reasons, but the extra dimension of including the enjoyment of sexual stimulation is a) brilliantly effective and b) troubling to report)

I dont know that its 'troubling' to report it. I have always viewed the bonobos as being sexually predated and assaulted as a control mechanism (if sexual assault can be said to exist in animals), in much the same way that dogs hump others/people as a method of domination.

Yes. Being told "You must believe this, because I told you to", would not be preparation for rational, fact- based, mental processing and decision making.

The Stonewall Cult fits neatly into the gap where fading old religions have left brains ready-plucked and oven-ready for the instruction: "Don't ask questions: Questioning is in itself sinful: Just believe what you have been ordered to believe, because only then can you acquire virtue".

I'm of the (perhaps controversial) opinion that modern social justice theory simply could not have arisen in a civilisation that had never been influenced by Christianity. Large sections of Catholic and evangelical Christian thought have been retained and reskinned, such as hierarchy, pursuit of virtue, mysteries of faith (that which cannot be explained in human terms but which must be believed), transubstantiation in regards to self-identity, the treatment of blasphemers / heretics / apostates / infidels, and the deification of martyrs.

Social justice theory also has strong influence from postmodernism, which is a rebellion against the kinds of strict boundaries and definitions that are often found in very religious or traditional cultures.

Just as a disclaimer, I'm religious myself and not opposed to the idea of social justice theory, just some of the ways in which it's executed.