Phenomenology of hate: A reply to a thread started by a Memoir of a Tired Feminist.
Power, Fear and Resentment as Sources of Gender Hate (Part 2)
In the Game of Power, everybody has reasons to hate each other, but nobody thinks they deserve the hate. Here is why.
This text follows directly from Part 1, and you might want to read it as a voice in this debate:
NOTE: I am a man and I am writing this from a male perspective. I have way more to say about men than about women and you will see this throughout the text. I invite anyone who wishes to add the missing nuance from a female perspective to do so in the comments or own stories.
Nobody in the Game thinks they deserve the hate
Some men, whether they’re winning or not, don’t think they deserve women’s hate, because they don’t really treat women as people.
Points shouldn’t hate you for wanting to score them. Points shouldn’t want to be players. Points should know their place and stay there. We will treat the points well and give the points all that points could wish for, and the points should be grateful for that. Well-cared-for points feeling hate is just wholly inappropriate.
Fortunately, more and more men see women as humans, not just points. But even then, they are still playing the Game and the rules of the Game remain such that receiving female attention, love and sex, are worth points.
They know that getting these points by force or manipulation is wrong, but they still want the points. They hear about this new hot strategy: become a ‘Nice Guy’. They advertise loudly that they know women aren’t just points and they will ‘treat them well’.
These guys don’t think they deserve the hate, because they think they aren’t as bad as the other guys. They will happily #NotAllMen the living shit out of you, because they honestly feel wounded that you don’t notice how much courtesy they are giving you by treating you as a person (or at least pretending to).
Don’t hate me, I’m so powerless
But leave aside those very problematic attitudes, because there are some more understandable mechanisms out there. Note the wording: understandable doesn’t mean right. There is little that’s morally right about the way our monkey brains make us think sometimes.
Most men in the Game don’t think they deserve the hate because most men think they are powerless.
The bad guys, the ones who are the correct target of women’s fear and resentment and hate, are those who have power and abuse it — and that is always them, not me.
How is that understandable? There is always somebody more powerful than you, somebody you compare yourself to. And because we all focus way more on the things we want than the things we already have, we are blind to the power we have but hyper-focused on that which we don’t. Welcome to how our monkey-brains work.
The old winners feel they don’t have much power anymore, so why aren’t you hating the new winners. The new winners were brought up feeling powerless, so why aren’t you hating the real bullies here. Neither of them feel like they can be the bad guys, they don’t have much power to abuse anyway.
Now, here comes the twist.
The great majority of men don’t think they deserve the hate, because they only see the power they do not have when they compare themselves to women. And what power is that?
The power to control access to sex and love.
This is the only power they can’t get, so it grows in their heads until no other power matters to them. They might have all the rights, money and priviledge, but they still see themselves as powerless, because they cannot get the one thing they want so bad.
Indeed, their hyper-focus on controlling access to sex and love as the main source of power, makes them see women as immensely powerful. And thus they do not see themselves, poor powerless victims, as valid targets of hate.
Instead, they once again feel like the powerful are using them as kicking boys — except this time it’s the all-powerful, sex-controlling women who kick them.
So what about those women?
They aren’t immune to being much more focused on the power they don’t yet have than that which they do. They tend to overlook their sexual power, their free ticket to avoid most dangerous and outright shitty jobs, or the soft skills and emotional intelligence they were taught but boys denied.
But even in most progressive and liberal countries, women still have way fewer powers than men do, and that ratio gets worse the more conservative and religious the place you live in.
Thus women also don’t feel they are valid targets of hate. They see the hate that comes out of resentment as invalid, because men shouldn’t resent them for wanting to be their own persons who can control their own bodies.
And they see the hate that comes out of fear as invalid, because they do not think they have enough power to be the bad guys one could fear. Even when they do in fact have the power to cause a great deal of harm to men, they don’t see it as serious enough, because they are way more focused on the powers they don’t yet have.
Let’s get personal
Nobody plays this Game as ‘Men’ or ‘Women’. We all play as ourselves. The Power Game is a single player game.
We talk about it in general terms, but the truth is, the only power differentials that matter on the ground are the ones between you and me. On the ground, all our fear, resentment, and hate starts from direct, personal experiences we have with each other.
And on the ground, the individual power differences between people far outstrip any differences between genders. Women might have less power than men, but a successful woman has more power than many individual men. Men might have less sexual capital, but a guy who is hot and confident has way more of it than many women.
In practice, all of us feel an awful lot of fear of the specific people who have more points than us (in some respect) and resentment of those who prevent us from getting the points we want. And we all score points by competing against each other and sometimes even putting down those less powerful than us. It doesn’t matter what our or their gender is, all that matters is the power differential.
So, when we are on the receiving end of ‘hating all men’ or ‘hating all women’, our first thought likely isn’t whether men or women as a group deserve this. Our first reflection is whether we deserve this. And when we think about who it is that’s hating us, we do not think of men or women as a group. We think of these specific men and women we perceive as more powerful than us.
No wonder we react by saying we don’t deserve that hate. When we hear that, we all feel like we are the powerless ones who are treated as kicking boys in somebody else’s power trip.
This game stupid!
I don’t think there is a way to win. I think even Jeff Bezos, Emmanuel Macron, and all of those we might envy, don’t feel they’re winning that game. They probably also focus on the points they don’t have yet and are just as upset about them as we are about the things we don’t have yet.
But it is really hard to not play the game, too.
Refusing to play feels an awful lot like losing. Other people will continue to use you as a way to score points and you need quite some mental resilience to not let this get under your skin. Perhaps it’s impossible to completely opt out without risking that you effectively give your power to those who might use it against you.
I am honestly not sure what the right way is here, but I am certain that you can’t just stay in the game unreflectively, simply because all the other lobsters do.
What I am sure of, is that reflecting on the topic and seeing how the Power Game works, can not only help us avoid getting used as point pots, but also understand the actions of others.
We can draw their attention to what they are doing and thus call them out on it more effectively. Perhaps we can show them that they should abandon some of their point scoring methods. We can try to understand what place in the game they think they’re at and how that impacts their actions. What they consider as points. What points they want and thus hyper-focus on, what points they have and thus no longer see as so important.
Perhaps you have worked it out better than me and want to share your thoughts in the comments. For now, I am leaving you with the wisdom of Gog, an endearing half-ogre character from one of my favourite games, The Red Dragon Inn.
PS. You might be reading this thinking: all great with your analysis, but it sure sounds like women’s fear, resentment and hate of men are way more justified than the other way around. Absolutely. I didn’t write this explicitly, because I was worried that if I do, I will lose those who disagree before they finish reading. If that is you, I hope that by the time you are reading these words, you might be more inclined to agree.
Retagging to keep continuity: Rhoda Owolabi, SC, Elle Beau, Ossiana Tepfenhart, April Hawkins, Ask A Bitchface, Sanni Lark, Haylee Griffith, Robert K Starr (he/him), Jessica Wildfire, Katie Jgln, Amber Fraley, Bree Yoo Sun Jung, 정 유선, June Kirri, Celtic Chameleon, Pineapple Jones-Smith, Taru Anniina Liikanen, Fay Wylde, Shelly Fagan, Rivka Wolf, Argumentative Penguin, Katie Jgln, Trey Hamilton, A Strong Woman Weak, Jack Brown, Vincent Downing at thehumanistbeing.org.
