#maninism

Go find a group of guys hanging out and see how long it takes you to figure out the pecking order, because there is one. There’s always a pecking order. Guys don’t plan it or talk about it, but it’s there. It’s based on and influenced by a thousand different little factors. Social skills, tax bracket, healthiness of relationship, alcohol tolerance etc.; they all play their part.

The guy at the top is the one getting ribbed the least by the others. He’s the least excited to be there and he’s also the least aware of everyone else’s status in the group. Those are all very, very relative, so it may take a bit to find him. The guy at the bottom is easiest to spot because he’s the most enthusiastic. In some groups, he’s the butt of almost every joke. In others, not one joke or insult will be even casually lobbed at him. There’ll always be a prod or two for the leader, but the guy at the bottom may be getting completely left out of that.

This organic hierarchy is one of the most universal traits you’ll find among men. You’ll see it very clearly in the Americas. A lot of Asia has actually codified it into the language. There’s a trick to spotting it with Russian and Eastern European guys, but once you start seeing it, you’ll see it right away. It’s most difficult to spot among Northern European guys as many of the tells disappear in public, but if you get into the group, you’ll feel it.

There’s probably some evolutionary thing to it. Successful warriors always have a strong hierarchy, which is not only important to effectiveness in the field, but also to peace at home. The tribe can’t survive if all the young men are killing each other, after all. Larger groups have to formalize these hierarchies in some way, but when it’s just you and the boys, your genes remember when “society” meant 50 or so people who were extremely possessive of a particular river.

Feminism is essentially an anti-status movement. Women have a sense of hierarchy, as well, but it’s always tended towards exclusion rather than ranking. For those who met certain qualifications, there was a support structure. If you failed to meet the given standards, you were ignored or shunned.

However, the rise of Feminism necessitated a more inclusive model. Standing against the patriarchy meant needing all the help you could get, even if that help was the slutty girl or that bitch who never helped with the bake sales. At some point, the ideal of equal representation under the law became entwined with universal inclusion. We can’t have equality AND slut-shaming because that feeds back into the hierarchy. It’s not enough to allow transwomen to use the ladies’, they must be included, supported, invited to hen nights.

This is the aspect of Feminism (and Civil Rights, for that matter) that threatens so many men. To varying degrees of consciousness, they’ve invested in the hierarchy. They’ve made serious life choices intended to improve their standing. It’s not difficult to find men who calculate status into virtually every decision they make (hint: if he cares about wristwatch brands, he’s probably preoccupied with status).

Now, for the guys in the middle, this is least threatening. They have the least to gain from the hierarchy. They don’t care enough to do the things necessary to move up, but they still smart from the shit rolling downhill. 

The fiercest opponents to Feminism are the guys at the bottom. They have probably invested the most in the hierarchy in a long string of failed bids to move up. It’s the Sunk Cost Fallacy paired with the Ben Franklin Effect; despite the fact that their attempts to move up are not working and the truth that Feminism would improve their lives, their past investments have turned them into true believers in the system. (It’s also why the highest concentrations of political conservatives are found at the extreme ends of the financial spectrum.)

As for the guys at the top, they are least aware of the hierarchy, in general. They tend not to think of status as a construct, but as a natural byproduct of personal characteristics and choices; an illusion, essentially. Poverty isn’t the problem, laziness is. There’s no glass ceiling, women just don’t have enough ambition. We don’t have racism in this country, we just have a lot of blacks who won’t let go of the past.

Humans are naturally resistant to change, unless they can see clearly how this will improve things. The guys at the top simply don’t see the problem, they don’t see the need for improvement and so they resist. Some might be conscious of how Feminism could have a negative impact on their social, political and financial standings, but mostly they just don’t see the point. Hence, they tend to dismiss the whole thing. “Everyone’s got stuff to complain about. You’ve got problems? Me too. The difference between you and me is that I don’t go begging other people to fix them for me.”

There’s likely no getting through to the guys at the bottom. There’s a reason none of those guys with rebel flags on their trucks are descended from plantation owners. Their families never owned slaves, though they likely helped lynch a few. They’re just good sons of the South.

Those at the top can be swayed if they can first be shown that the hierarchy is a real thing. This usually means dropping them into a situation where they don’t have high status and are unable to move up. Or if something they have a vested interest in protecting suddenly loses a lot of status.

Hate, like anger, is a secondary response. It’s something we use to protect what we really care about. Responding to hate with attacks (e.g. shaming on social media) only serves to justify the defense mechanism and further entrench them.

Just seen a post that has moaned about Meninism. The final line of the post is as follows: ‘What right do men not have?’

In answer to this, it is very apparent, according to this one feminist, that the right they don’t have is the right to Meninism.