They really do want to tear you down

For many years, I was vaguely aware that women appeared to instinctively desire to tear men down. This was primarily due to the frequent belittling I saw wives and girlfriends meting out to their husbands and boyfriends. I was largely impervious to it myself throughout my youth, mostly because I tended to favor dating women who ranged from barely self-aware to slightly above-average intelligence. Let's face it, no matter how hot she is, very few women are seriously going to try to tear down a man who has an 80-point IQ advantage over them... and the arrogance to match.*

But it was quite normal for my highly intelligent female friends to attempt to "put me in my place", which is a very telling expression when you think about it. One of my favorite female friends and I had a pattern throughout high school and college wherein she would directly challenge me in a very direct manner, often in public, only to get brutally slapped down. Again. This would upset her and she would stop speaking to me for a few weeks, after which time everything would return to normal. This didn't bother me in the slightest; she is a wonderful woman and I still regard her as the sister I never had.

But even if this treatment was seldom directed at me, it was still disturbing to witness the way in which so many women who had barely lifted a finger in thirty years to support themselves regularly attempted to cut down the very men who paid their bills and made their comfortable upper middle class lifestyles possible. It didn't matter if the male accomplishment was in business, sports, or hobbydom, it was quite normal for the woman in his life to belittle it at every opportunity.

Game, of course, accounts for this, but it is still interesting to read an explanation of the phenomenon from the female perspective:

The reason that women resist and reject advice to flatter men is basically an issue of power. You wouldn’t know it from reading manosphere sites, but men, especially if white and educated, get the majority of perks in the world. They get the best jobs. They occupy the top of pretty much every occupational field, fields of women’s interests included (fashion, beauty, cooking, media). They make the most money. They’re more implicitly trusted in matters of business. They get to have sex with tons of people and receive very little judgment for it. They get to marry women young enough to be their daughters and have kids at age 70. They get to be funny, outrageous, outspoken, and wild, and people just chuckle affectionately. (Women who are funny, outrageous, outspoken, and wild, on the other hand, just get called bitches, sluts, and bulldykes.) They get to do most of the exciting and interesting things in this world, and they tend to think they know everything about everything. And generally they don’t pay much of a social price for getting fat and dressing dumpy.

Meanwhile, women are expected to be quiet and have babies, always be up for sex, never gain any weight, and never have an opinion that contradicts a man’s. Given these circumstances, it’s pretty easy to see why a modern woman balks at making a man feel good about himself.

Translation: the one thing that Freud got right was penis envy. And while Haley is obviously cognizant of the fact that this is self-destructive behavior for the woman who seeks happy and positive relationships with the men in her life, what Fred Reed calls "the chip" is nevertheless readily apparent. She also misses the point, which is that the primary reason men have most of those perks is because they have earned them. For some reason that I have never been able to understand, few women find it natural to grasp the distinction between effort and accomplishment.

There is also an amount of solipsistic projection here. For example, I don't know any men who are the least bit troubled by a woman harboring an opinion that contradicts his, but very few women indeed can handle their opinion being contradicted by anyone, male or female.

But for men, it is important to understand that very few women truly understand the concept of being on your side, right or wrong, the way your male friends do. (The female version has it reversed; if she is on your side, then you are right.) And even when she is for you, she may simultaneously be against you for the various reasons that Haley lists. Furthermore, the lower down the hierarchy you are, the more difficult it will be for you to deal with the challenges this mindset poses.


* I'm aware of what Roissy writes about intelligence being a handicap, but he himself tends to belie the notion being a hard rule. Remember, genuine contempt = female catnip. The main reason smart young men tend to be omegas and gammas is because they a) pedestalize the opposite sex, and b) place little social value on their own intelligence. And the lack of physical exercise plus not showering regularly doesn't help.