There is a great deal of time and energy spent examining intra-gender bullying, particularly among men. And rightly so. If there is one significant issue that has not been fully uncovered in the gender dialogue, it is the way that we raise boys to interact with each other. The values of loyalty and friendship that constitute the masculine code. How a man interacts with his peers, is crucial in the devlopment of his masculinity.
As I have said elsewhere, masculinity is intimately tied to, if not synonymous with, authority. You could also replace authority here, with the word and concept hierachy. Where femininity has been falsely associated with vulnerability, innocence and helplessness, masculinity has been falsely associated with physical power and social authority.
To assert one's masculinity, is to assert one's authority. To ascribe masculine qualities to an individual, is to place them high in a value-hierarchy. Masculinity, as we use it witin our culturally conditioned context, is a hierarchical concept. It's a value judgement about power and the social qualities of that power, more specifically.
The issue of masculinity then, can only be fully understood in a social context. The male peer-group decides the man's masculinity. To assert authority, a man must act, and his actions are judged and placed in a hieracrhy of values. Across all cultures and across history, this is what we mean by masculinity.
Now, of course, along with the male peer-group, female selection and submissiveness play an intimate role in the ascription of masculine qualities. The 'good-little-woman' in Patriarchal societies, was the woman who reinforced her husband's masculinity, by reinforcing his authority. In a patrachal society, like the society of ancient Rome, a woman had much to gain by doing this. Her status was determined by the status of her man.
Opposing the meme of the 'good-little-woman' is the meme of the 'whore' or 'femme fatale.' She's like the female Ronin, her sexual power is all her own, and it is deployed not to raise the power of the man or men in her life, but the power and status of herself only. That is the only reason that such negative concepts have evolved in our culture. The woman who does not reinforce the status and authority of masculinity, must be derided and dismissed as evil.
This is a hugely important aspect of what has been termed misogyny. The hatred of women, is really the hatred of the liberated woman. Because a man's masculinity has become associated with peer-group dynamics, and depends on his authority acted out in a social context, a woman who refuses to use her sexuality to support that is deeply threatening to the patriarchal man.
As much as the traditional patriarchal concept of masculinty was shallow, so was the traditional concept of femininity. The madonna-whore internal schizophrenia was a social inevitability in a culture where women gained status through their men. Getting ahead in life was easy if you were willing to play the game. Very dangerous if you were not willing. Being a woman in a patriarchal context then, was a cutthroat enterprise. Either you abided by the power-politics, or you risked banishment and brutal death. Or, importantly, rape.
I would like to distinguish the meme's associated with patriarchal control of women, and the new, emergent meme of the female bully. I do so, because I know my enemy well, and I now that regardless of what I say, she will endeavor to show that my assertions about the female bully, are just classic forms of misogyny in disguise. That the very concept of the female bully is just another product of the patriarchal man's inability to control woman. That my posturing as a nice guy, is just another version of this attempt to prop up my masculinity through the social responses of women.
I don't place myself above archaic conditioning when it comes to my masculinity. But that's not what's going on here.
The female bully is the woman who uses her sexuality in a way dominates those around her, not for any assertion of female power in a patriarchal context, but simply for the pathological joy of experiencing that power. She is the woman who believes that her 'liberation' involves assuming the power she percives men have had, and which is now her right.
The female bully is just like the male bully. She has taken female liberation to mean nothing more than her right to assume the frills and the superficialities of traditional male privilege. Like the courtesans of Rome, such bullies know that such privelege is false, empty and violent. But the courtesans of the ancient world had no choice, just like the soldiers in the rank and file had no choice but to kill. Authority and power were asserted by reducing others.
What makes the bully a bully is the wilful nature of their behaviour. No one is forcing their hand, they are simply driven by the toxic rush of asserting their power in such shallow ways. In order to justify themselves, these bullies will say things like 'that just the way things are' or 'don't hate the player hate the game.'
The female bully needs the simplistic interpretation of social power based on an outdated concept of 'patriarchy'. She needs it because it allows her to form a narrative around her abusive tendencies. The bully never nows she is a bully.
Now I urge you to exmanine any resistence to what I am saying. Am I writing this because I have 'mother issues' and I am 'just bitter' or I 'need to get laid'? Or is your need to reduce my ideas to masculine pathology a case of being unwilling to accept female agression?
If it is the latter then I accuse you of being the worst kind of patriarch, feeding redundant concepts of female innocence and purity that are no longer relevant. I charge you also with doing so under a poisonous pretention towards feminism. A real feminist however, must be ready and willing to accept that all women are human first. If she does that, the very idea that a woman could e a bully would pose no real problem.
The female bully is a rapist. Her sexuality is a tool for power. Whether it is physical or not, any such assertions of power, play into destructive and abusive concepts of masculine power, whether they are acted out by men or women. To claim liberation, by simply becoming the oppressor, is to enslave yourself even further.
Whereas certain broken men have no refuge for their emasculated ego but rape, the broken and patholigical woman performs her violence by using her sexuality as a fom of emotional abuse. Both are instances of rape, because both seek to assert authority by destroying it in another.
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