Not only do men fear social ostracism/ social condemnation, they live it every day. Men do not enjoy automatic membership of 'society' as women do. They are treated as a threat by default and they must convince women of their benevolence (and utility) before women grant them (temporary) entry into society (AKA social approval).
There was a clip going round a while back of a trans identified young woman who had fully transitioned and was living as a man and was now sobbing into the camera because living as a man was so brutally lonely and harsh. The horrifying realisation was something along the lines of "I used to feel more warmth, acceptance and emotional connection talking to random women in the women's bathroom than I ever get in society now as a man where I am now shunned by everyone".
Men's default status is to be 'suspect' and 'potentially a threat' and therefore best to avoid. Men can only counter this by being super high status (expensive suit, obviously rich etc) or by having a woman with him who signals her ease and therefore marks him as already approved.
Ordinary men wandering about on their own are basically rapists and axe murderers to be avoided (this is what it would feel like for most women to spend a day in an ordinary guy's shoes).
This is why reputational destruction (a woman's primary means of attack) is so feared by men. They are already skating on thin ice as it is - just for being men. A woman's disapproval or scorn - never mind something like a false rape accusation - is enough to send him to the very margins of society. And studies are clear that being socially ostracised and socially condemned has the same effect as actual physical abuse. It is extremely harmful to health with profound physiological effects, and it will reduce life expectancy (perhaps why men have shorter lives than women on average).
Is this why there are women who flirt with married men? Why they say the ring is such an attractor? It marks them as approved, whereas for men the ring marks a woman as unavailable?
I think it's also worth considering that a significant faction of the younger viewers are inclined to sympathize with Amy. So many on social media will cite the "Cool Girl" speech and then caption it "Amy Dunne did nothing wrong", it's surreal. Perhaps they see themselves in her? All I know is that I personally really hated her character, not even in a magnificent villain way (I have a lot more respect for Light Yagami, haha), but just loathed her.
In a sense, I wonder if it's the polar opposite of the American Psycho phenomenon? Bateman is pretty ostentatious about his strength and ability to inflict violence. While I don't think guys idolize him, he *is* meme-ified much more often by them.
This was an excellent read and I love that you and your partner like to delve openly into such matters. I am not entirely convinced that emotional manipulation is inherently a female trait- I think it is the avenue chosen by those who are highly intelligent but convinced of their lack of personal power/agency. Perhaps historically due to laws and social convention, women have been in a position to feel this most often and resort to plying these sorts of skills. Not all women feel immediately threatened by men and their physical prowess- I do not but I do believe both sexes have deep seated fears of being betrayed(cuckholded/mistresses). This fear leads to distrust and worries of being played the fool…and nature has conspired to make males most vulnerable to uncertainties about the ownership of their offspring- women suffer no such insecurities obviously. Really interesting though and I intend to continue with your engagement of spouse on this issue/observation and look forward to new insights perhaps from his male perspective. He has often told me that I do not think like most women which has always kind of puzzled me b/c as a woman, I have few consistent traits I feel are endemic to our sex (same with men too), but perhaps I’ve just associated with too many weirdos over the years to be able to make any sweeping generalizations that I feel comfortable with. Again, great article- enjoyed it immensely! 🥰
Thank you for this insightful comment. Glad you enjoyed the article.
And yes, I should have stipulated in the piece that the emotional manipulation tactics I discuss are not exclusively feminine in origin. I was merely focussing on the archetypal character of the bunny boiler and how these traits manifest in them specifically as a case study.
Thank you so much for reading and please let me know what your husband says as I would be greatly interested in his opinion alongside yours.
Wonderfully elucidated and well thought out. The femme fatale is as old as Tiamat and it is the archetypal terror of the male psyche in the same way that a Ted Bundy type is the archetypal terror of the female psyche. Dovetails well with my recent effort
Unfortunately I have insight, as a man who's suffered both the legal catastrophe of false accusation by a woman of abuse and the loss of a sister to domestic violence.
It's not so much men's physical superiority that scares women as their long history of using it against them violently and prolifically. Every woman knows a woman who, etc. The crime stats on violence against women, etc.
Your theory on origin of female manipulation isn't wrong, but oversimplified. Men and women manipulate each other with equal gusto, the women don't have the monopoly on it that is implied, unintentionally no doubt, by your characterization. I WOULD agree that women manipulate each other more than men do each other; that makes women both more often the perpetrators of manipulation than men are, AND more often the victims of it.
I'm guessing you also didn't mean to imply that women evolved to be smarter than men to compensate for physical disadvantage, even though that would be a consistent application of your reasoning 😂
It's best to remember that the movie is a revenge fantasy written by a woman, not reality. Trying to use it as an example of real-life phenomena as you do in your piece is problematic.
The truth is more mundane, and perhaps even scarier: in reality, a woman bent on ruining a man needn't be so thorough or extreme in her machinations; the people who believe her to begin with will tend to add on to her lies with lies of their own making, without her prompting or even her knowledge. They appoint themselves White Knights to her cause, relieve her of the need to continue the campaign herself, and the tale will grow with the telling, as Tolkien said, especially if there are children involved.
And of course, any anger a man shows in response to these developments will be taken as proof of his violent out-of-control nature.
The social and legal institutions that adjudicate situations like this at the civil level, the local equivalents of Family Services and Family Court, are dominated by liberals who REALLY resented their cold or abusive fathers and are ready to project it 😬
A man caught up in this insanity will serve as the scapegoat for male violence AND daddy issues.
Possibly my favourite out of all of your essays. The subject of evolutionary psychology is endlessly fascinating and knowing about it can be life changing!
Thank you so much. I thought you’d be interested in this one as I’ve seen you reference evolutionary psychology before in your work. I agree it is an incredibly fascinating field of study.
I’m mostly interested in how controversial it is with certain demographics. So many people instantly label it as junk science because they are uncomfortable with the idea of the human animal actually having animal instincts and drives….
Seems to me to just be narcissistic wishful thinking on their part because they like to think of themselves as something more than a member of an animal species. That’s my theory at least….
An important topic and you covered it well … one wonders to what degree our image-obsessed society is partly to blame for the apparent increase in self-serving behaviours that intentionally, or otherwise, harm others?
Excellent comments! wow. I haven't see Gone Girl, but I get the idea from your description. Depending on how, and by whom, he is raised, he may not have had exposure to Bunny Boiler types, so if he is young might easily fall prey to one. Once he is a little older and has been burned by one, he indeed will be afraid of them, and super cautious going forward. Once a man is aware female manipulators exist (and is aware of Dark Triad types on general) he will rightly avoid them.
I would definitely recommend watching the film. I believe David Fincher hints at just what you are saying in it…that Nick was naive to the true nature of Amy at least, and maybe women like her as a concept.
His twin sister never liked her and treated her with mistrust… She even says she knew something wasn’t right about her sister in law all along. Maybe this was a commentary about how women innately understand other women better than men or perhaps just that Nick was particularly naive…
Thanks, I will try to watch it. I have sense it was somewhat based on the Lacie Peterson murder (with a somewhat different premise), but maybe not. I do recall seeing another Netflix special about some event that occurred in real life AFTER the movie that kind of paralleled it.
In terms of manipulative women, I think its hard to imagine until you directly experience it as a man. I have have know a number of women over the years who were psychologically unstable, not the majority, but not a small number, either. If you are close to any BPD type (borderline) it can be very hard to deal with and very hard to leave.
Also, its hard to imagine male psychopaths (or pathological narcissists) as well, until, or unless, you get close to one. Once you meet one, and see into their soul, it changes you. Knowing someone without a conscience is really unsettling.
Excellent. I totally agree. As a 56 yo woman, I’ve seen my share of female toxicity and it is rampant. Another example are all of these women being revealed as BDSM participants who then later accuse their partners of rape and abuse. Women also do not defend one another; rather many of them will backstab their best friend over a man. Gone Girl was so disturbing and the message not amplified nearly enough.
Thank you. I've heard such horror stories. I even knew a guy whose ex-girlfiend retrospectively removed consent and accused him. Dragged him through legal proceedings for 6 months before admitting she was lying and dropped the charges. Pretty much ruined my buddy's life...
Thank you for this interesting article. As one who was profoundly disturbed by Gone Girl, and so concluded I disliked it, also developing an (admittedly irrational) active dislike for Rosamund Pike in the role, I find myself in a seeming minority of one. But a brief reading of Gillian Flynn in Time has confirmed me in my diverse but lonely opinion.
As to your assertions regarding fears in marriage or partnership, my personal experience is that the woman's greatest fear is abandonment (e.g. through the man's betrayal, leading to his departure for another woman) rather than physical violence. I do not deny the existence of female fear of male physical violence: my statement is made just on the basis my own experience. In the context of Gone Girl, I would argue that that fear, transformed into anger, acts as a justification, both in Amy's psychopathic heart and in the prejudiced public or collective mind, for the rightness of her plan for revenge.
It is salutary to remember that the female is capable of violent physical as well as verbal abuse. Again from personal experience, and speaking as one who shies away from myself inflicting any kind of abuse, this reflects her own insecurities, projections and manipulations... in the style of 'you made me do this'.
Thank you again. Thoughts (and recollection) have been duly provoked!
Thank you for the thoughtful comment. I am working on a piece that touches on infidelity and sexual jealousy atm and your words on fear of abandonment have given me pause. I may have to rethink my argument somewhat. Thank you for helping my expand my thinking. A real gift...
I am happy to have given you some food for thought. In attachment theory, the fear of abandonment arises from what is called “insecure anxious attachment”. Don't know if you are familiar with this theory (if so please forgive the redundancy), but I have found it v useful in analysing and understanding relationship problems, and aggressive behaviour within those relationships. The originator of attachment theory was John Bowlby, but the ‘modern bible’ of attachment theory is the book ‘Attached,’ by Levine and Heller.
Stable relationships generally are marked by secure attachment. Instability, with (ultimately) the potential for abuse, violence and withdrawal, derives from insecure attachment which may fall into the anxious category (fear of abandonment and loss) or the avoidant category (fear of intimacy or closeness).
A psychoanalyst much underrated and little known who wrote on these issues was Karen Horney (1885-1952). I recommend her book “Neurosis and Human Growth” (1950). Here and elsewhere she discusses the 3 types of movement in attachment: moving towards others, moving away from others, and moving against others, and how these forms of movement, often neurotic, can become compulsive behaviours.
Very articulate and most enjoyable. I arrived my usual sceptical self but found this a very engaging and fertile piece.
I agree with Tracy (who posted a reply above), that manipulative aggression isn’t an exclusively female trait (thinking of the “foxes vs. wolves paradigm here) - but I do agree that it skews heavily female, for reasons of comparative physical agency.
Of course, a mixed approach is feasible, as in Machiavelli’s “The Prince”, where manipulation backed by often lethal force is recommended for effective government. However, the mix of options skews most heavily toward the manipulative recruitment of external power and influence when one lacks the ready means of forceful retaliation or enforcement, hence the sex disparity, as you point out.
As an aside, I always found it entertaining that a section of the populace loves to maintain the interchangeability of men and women, while continuing to obsess over “The Handmaid’s Tale” and other crude r@pe/abuse fantasies. Keeping one’s cake but eating it too? It is at least an inconsistent position to try and maintain.
Still, as O’Brien points out Winston in 1984, if the party wishes you to believe that 2+2 =5, then that is the sacrifice the party requires of you (probably misquoted, but consistent in meaning with the text!)
Thank you for this well articulated and thorough analysis.
The ‘Handmaid’s Tale’ point you make is very interesting and something I have always noticed. The contradiction between two core tenets of the identitarian postmodernist faith of the 21st Century is staggering.
How they can reconcile a belief of gender being interchangeable with a belief that one of those genders is habitually oppressed by the other by virtue of physical superiority is as perplexing as it is epistemically bankrupt.
Also, the fact that so much of fiction that appeals to and is popular with women involves the female characters being either subjugated, dominated or violated by powerful male figure is interesting too.
Thanks for that! Agreed, re. the final point there: the obsession - glamorisation, even - of mutilated and/or murdered women in shows which are hugely popular with women (and in some cases, apparently designed to meet that market) perennially baffles. Not very “on message”, really.
Is it the performative “drawing of teeth” from a primal fear? Or a manifestation of the Thanatos urge that Freud explored in “Beyond the Pleasure Principle”? Who knows. Beats me!
I've been wanting to write something in this topic but it is so inflammatory. Which is funny. I dance around it more. 🤣. Another good video is this one looking at all the negative feminine archetypes:
This is a good analysis, which is almost entirely correct, except for the one tiny detail that it's basic premise is wrong. The thing that men fear from women is not that she will turn out to be a psychotic mastermind, but rather she will carry someone else's baby, which you will then unknowingly raise.
Not only do men fear social ostracism/ social condemnation, they live it every day. Men do not enjoy automatic membership of 'society' as women do. They are treated as a threat by default and they must convince women of their benevolence (and utility) before women grant them (temporary) entry into society (AKA social approval).
There was a clip going round a while back of a trans identified young woman who had fully transitioned and was living as a man and was now sobbing into the camera because living as a man was so brutally lonely and harsh. The horrifying realisation was something along the lines of "I used to feel more warmth, acceptance and emotional connection talking to random women in the women's bathroom than I ever get in society now as a man where I am now shunned by everyone".
Men's default status is to be 'suspect' and 'potentially a threat' and therefore best to avoid. Men can only counter this by being super high status (expensive suit, obviously rich etc) or by having a woman with him who signals her ease and therefore marks him as already approved.
Ordinary men wandering about on their own are basically rapists and axe murderers to be avoided (this is what it would feel like for most women to spend a day in an ordinary guy's shoes).
This is why reputational destruction (a woman's primary means of attack) is so feared by men. They are already skating on thin ice as it is - just for being men. A woman's disapproval or scorn - never mind something like a false rape accusation - is enough to send him to the very margins of society. And studies are clear that being socially ostracised and socially condemned has the same effect as actual physical abuse. It is extremely harmful to health with profound physiological effects, and it will reduce life expectancy (perhaps why men have shorter lives than women on average).
Is this why there are women who flirt with married men? Why they say the ring is such an attractor? It marks them as approved, whereas for men the ring marks a woman as unavailable?
Yes. The term you are looking for is "preselection."
This comment would be worthwile to turn into a post.
Thought-provoking article all throughout!
I think it's also worth considering that a significant faction of the younger viewers are inclined to sympathize with Amy. So many on social media will cite the "Cool Girl" speech and then caption it "Amy Dunne did nothing wrong", it's surreal. Perhaps they see themselves in her? All I know is that I personally really hated her character, not even in a magnificent villain way (I have a lot more respect for Light Yagami, haha), but just loathed her.
In a sense, I wonder if it's the polar opposite of the American Psycho phenomenon? Bateman is pretty ostentatious about his strength and ability to inflict violence. While I don't think guys idolize him, he *is* meme-ified much more often by them.
This was an excellent read and I love that you and your partner like to delve openly into such matters. I am not entirely convinced that emotional manipulation is inherently a female trait- I think it is the avenue chosen by those who are highly intelligent but convinced of their lack of personal power/agency. Perhaps historically due to laws and social convention, women have been in a position to feel this most often and resort to plying these sorts of skills. Not all women feel immediately threatened by men and their physical prowess- I do not but I do believe both sexes have deep seated fears of being betrayed(cuckholded/mistresses). This fear leads to distrust and worries of being played the fool…and nature has conspired to make males most vulnerable to uncertainties about the ownership of their offspring- women suffer no such insecurities obviously. Really interesting though and I intend to continue with your engagement of spouse on this issue/observation and look forward to new insights perhaps from his male perspective. He has often told me that I do not think like most women which has always kind of puzzled me b/c as a woman, I have few consistent traits I feel are endemic to our sex (same with men too), but perhaps I’ve just associated with too many weirdos over the years to be able to make any sweeping generalizations that I feel comfortable with. Again, great article- enjoyed it immensely! 🥰
Thank you for this insightful comment. Glad you enjoyed the article.
And yes, I should have stipulated in the piece that the emotional manipulation tactics I discuss are not exclusively feminine in origin. I was merely focussing on the archetypal character of the bunny boiler and how these traits manifest in them specifically as a case study.
Thank you so much for reading and please let me know what your husband says as I would be greatly interested in his opinion alongside yours.
Sure! A most frightening and vivid archetype… *chill running down my spine*! 😊 Best wishes for the New Year! 🥰
And to you… Many happy returns…
Wonderfully elucidated and well thought out. The femme fatale is as old as Tiamat and it is the archetypal terror of the male psyche in the same way that a Ted Bundy type is the archetypal terror of the female psyche. Dovetails well with my recent effort
https://jdanielsawyer.substack.com/p/the-hatred-that-binds-us
Thank you for your kind words…
Unfortunately I have insight, as a man who's suffered both the legal catastrophe of false accusation by a woman of abuse and the loss of a sister to domestic violence.
It's not so much men's physical superiority that scares women as their long history of using it against them violently and prolifically. Every woman knows a woman who, etc. The crime stats on violence against women, etc.
Your theory on origin of female manipulation isn't wrong, but oversimplified. Men and women manipulate each other with equal gusto, the women don't have the monopoly on it that is implied, unintentionally no doubt, by your characterization. I WOULD agree that women manipulate each other more than men do each other; that makes women both more often the perpetrators of manipulation than men are, AND more often the victims of it.
I'm guessing you also didn't mean to imply that women evolved to be smarter than men to compensate for physical disadvantage, even though that would be a consistent application of your reasoning 😂
It's best to remember that the movie is a revenge fantasy written by a woman, not reality. Trying to use it as an example of real-life phenomena as you do in your piece is problematic.
The truth is more mundane, and perhaps even scarier: in reality, a woman bent on ruining a man needn't be so thorough or extreme in her machinations; the people who believe her to begin with will tend to add on to her lies with lies of their own making, without her prompting or even her knowledge. They appoint themselves White Knights to her cause, relieve her of the need to continue the campaign herself, and the tale will grow with the telling, as Tolkien said, especially if there are children involved.
And of course, any anger a man shows in response to these developments will be taken as proof of his violent out-of-control nature.
The social and legal institutions that adjudicate situations like this at the civil level, the local equivalents of Family Services and Family Court, are dominated by liberals who REALLY resented their cold or abusive fathers and are ready to project it 😬
A man caught up in this insanity will serve as the scapegoat for male violence AND daddy issues.
Possibly my favourite out of all of your essays. The subject of evolutionary psychology is endlessly fascinating and knowing about it can be life changing!
Thank you so much. I thought you’d be interested in this one as I’ve seen you reference evolutionary psychology before in your work. I agree it is an incredibly fascinating field of study.
I’m mostly interested in how controversial it is with certain demographics. So many people instantly label it as junk science because they are uncomfortable with the idea of the human animal actually having animal instincts and drives….
Seems to me to just be narcissistic wishful thinking on their part because they like to think of themselves as something more than a member of an animal species. That’s my theory at least….
Thank you as always, Pallavi
No problem at all. The truth can be hard to deal with! Wishing you a good start to the new year 🤞
And to you and yours a Happy New Year…
My Mom said she couldn't finish this movie because Affleck's wife reminded my Mom too much of my ex wife.
She's not wrong.
Jesus, I am sorry you had to live through that man… Happy that it’s an ‘ex-wife’ you refer to and that you made it out.
I appreciate the sympathy, bud. It's 13 years in the rear view at this point. I've made myself a stronger man as a result.
Glad to hear it. Good for you, I mean it...👊
An important topic and you covered it well … one wonders to what degree our image-obsessed society is partly to blame for the apparent increase in self-serving behaviours that intentionally, or otherwise, harm others?
Thank you. I couldn’t agree more… Glad you liked the piece.
Excellent comments! wow. I haven't see Gone Girl, but I get the idea from your description. Depending on how, and by whom, he is raised, he may not have had exposure to Bunny Boiler types, so if he is young might easily fall prey to one. Once he is a little older and has been burned by one, he indeed will be afraid of them, and super cautious going forward. Once a man is aware female manipulators exist (and is aware of Dark Triad types on general) he will rightly avoid them.
I would definitely recommend watching the film. I believe David Fincher hints at just what you are saying in it…that Nick was naive to the true nature of Amy at least, and maybe women like her as a concept.
His twin sister never liked her and treated her with mistrust… She even says she knew something wasn’t right about her sister in law all along. Maybe this was a commentary about how women innately understand other women better than men or perhaps just that Nick was particularly naive…
Thanks for commenting…
Thanks, I will try to watch it. I have sense it was somewhat based on the Lacie Peterson murder (with a somewhat different premise), but maybe not. I do recall seeing another Netflix special about some event that occurred in real life AFTER the movie that kind of paralleled it.
In terms of manipulative women, I think its hard to imagine until you directly experience it as a man. I have have know a number of women over the years who were psychologically unstable, not the majority, but not a small number, either. If you are close to any BPD type (borderline) it can be very hard to deal with and very hard to leave.
Also, its hard to imagine male psychopaths (or pathological narcissists) as well, until, or unless, you get close to one. Once you meet one, and see into their soul, it changes you. Knowing someone without a conscience is really unsettling.
Excellent. I totally agree. As a 56 yo woman, I’ve seen my share of female toxicity and it is rampant. Another example are all of these women being revealed as BDSM participants who then later accuse their partners of rape and abuse. Women also do not defend one another; rather many of them will backstab their best friend over a man. Gone Girl was so disturbing and the message not amplified nearly enough.
Thank you. I've heard such horror stories. I even knew a guy whose ex-girlfiend retrospectively removed consent and accused him. Dragged him through legal proceedings for 6 months before admitting she was lying and dropped the charges. Pretty much ruined my buddy's life...
Thank you for this interesting article. As one who was profoundly disturbed by Gone Girl, and so concluded I disliked it, also developing an (admittedly irrational) active dislike for Rosamund Pike in the role, I find myself in a seeming minority of one. But a brief reading of Gillian Flynn in Time has confirmed me in my diverse but lonely opinion.
As to your assertions regarding fears in marriage or partnership, my personal experience is that the woman's greatest fear is abandonment (e.g. through the man's betrayal, leading to his departure for another woman) rather than physical violence. I do not deny the existence of female fear of male physical violence: my statement is made just on the basis my own experience. In the context of Gone Girl, I would argue that that fear, transformed into anger, acts as a justification, both in Amy's psychopathic heart and in the prejudiced public or collective mind, for the rightness of her plan for revenge.
It is salutary to remember that the female is capable of violent physical as well as verbal abuse. Again from personal experience, and speaking as one who shies away from myself inflicting any kind of abuse, this reflects her own insecurities, projections and manipulations... in the style of 'you made me do this'.
Thank you again. Thoughts (and recollection) have been duly provoked!
Thank you for the thoughtful comment. I am working on a piece that touches on infidelity and sexual jealousy atm and your words on fear of abandonment have given me pause. I may have to rethink my argument somewhat. Thank you for helping my expand my thinking. A real gift...
I am happy to have given you some food for thought. In attachment theory, the fear of abandonment arises from what is called “insecure anxious attachment”. Don't know if you are familiar with this theory (if so please forgive the redundancy), but I have found it v useful in analysing and understanding relationship problems, and aggressive behaviour within those relationships. The originator of attachment theory was John Bowlby, but the ‘modern bible’ of attachment theory is the book ‘Attached,’ by Levine and Heller.
Stable relationships generally are marked by secure attachment. Instability, with (ultimately) the potential for abuse, violence and withdrawal, derives from insecure attachment which may fall into the anxious category (fear of abandonment and loss) or the avoidant category (fear of intimacy or closeness).
A psychoanalyst much underrated and little known who wrote on these issues was Karen Horney (1885-1952). I recommend her book “Neurosis and Human Growth” (1950). Here and elsewhere she discusses the 3 types of movement in attachment: moving towards others, moving away from others, and moving against others, and how these forms of movement, often neurotic, can become compulsive behaviours.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/beautiful-minds/finding-inner-harmony-the-underappreciated-legacy-of-karen-horney/
Very articulate and most enjoyable. I arrived my usual sceptical self but found this a very engaging and fertile piece.
I agree with Tracy (who posted a reply above), that manipulative aggression isn’t an exclusively female trait (thinking of the “foxes vs. wolves paradigm here) - but I do agree that it skews heavily female, for reasons of comparative physical agency.
Of course, a mixed approach is feasible, as in Machiavelli’s “The Prince”, where manipulation backed by often lethal force is recommended for effective government. However, the mix of options skews most heavily toward the manipulative recruitment of external power and influence when one lacks the ready means of forceful retaliation or enforcement, hence the sex disparity, as you point out.
As an aside, I always found it entertaining that a section of the populace loves to maintain the interchangeability of men and women, while continuing to obsess over “The Handmaid’s Tale” and other crude r@pe/abuse fantasies. Keeping one’s cake but eating it too? It is at least an inconsistent position to try and maintain.
Still, as O’Brien points out Winston in 1984, if the party wishes you to believe that 2+2 =5, then that is the sacrifice the party requires of you (probably misquoted, but consistent in meaning with the text!)
Again, thank you for an interesting post.
Thank you for this well articulated and thorough analysis.
The ‘Handmaid’s Tale’ point you make is very interesting and something I have always noticed. The contradiction between two core tenets of the identitarian postmodernist faith of the 21st Century is staggering.
How they can reconcile a belief of gender being interchangeable with a belief that one of those genders is habitually oppressed by the other by virtue of physical superiority is as perplexing as it is epistemically bankrupt.
Also, the fact that so much of fiction that appeals to and is popular with women involves the female characters being either subjugated, dominated or violated by powerful male figure is interesting too.
Thanks for that! Agreed, re. the final point there: the obsession - glamorisation, even - of mutilated and/or murdered women in shows which are hugely popular with women (and in some cases, apparently designed to meet that market) perennially baffles. Not very “on message”, really.
Is it the performative “drawing of teeth” from a primal fear? Or a manifestation of the Thanatos urge that Freud explored in “Beyond the Pleasure Principle”? Who knows. Beats me!
I've been wanting to write something in this topic but it is so inflammatory. Which is funny. I dance around it more. 🤣. Another good video is this one looking at all the negative feminine archetypes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMV0BHKafsM
I’ve taken notes 📝 Very insightful
This is a good analysis, which is almost entirely correct, except for the one tiny detail that it's basic premise is wrong. The thing that men fear from women is not that she will turn out to be a psychotic mastermind, but rather she will carry someone else's baby, which you will then unknowingly raise.
Thank you. Glad you enjoyed it.
Can’t say I know the film…