Why we must study and expose covert female intrasexual competition.
Men need to man up. Women need to own up.
Many of my critics think it is hypocritical of me to point out that whilst I study and expose female intrasexual competition I also engage in it. This shows that they demonstrably do not understand my thesis.
My thesis does not state that women ought not to compete, but to own up to it.
“Individual incentives seldom align with the collective incentives of an entire group. Mechanisms to resolve this tension have produced major transitions in evolutionary history, including the origin of cellular life, multicellular life, and even societies. Failure to relieve this tension often results in pathology or social dysfunction.”
The facts are that competition within groups is far more common than competition without. This applies to the sexes. That males compete is not at issue. Culturally, we adore male intrasexual competition so much that we have built vast stadiums so thousands of people can attend to enjoy its spectacle. From the Roman arena to the Superbowl and the octagon, these places are timeless, universal, and sacred spaces where male warfare is played out for rich public spectacle.
Evolutionary theory was correctly criticized in the last century for focusing too much on male evolutionary agency, seeing women as passive or “coy” objects with no agency at all. My late mentor, Professor Anne Campbell, was one of the first to address this issue seriously and scientifically. As her work began to illuminate, this oversight is not unsurprising given what we have learned in the last 60 years about the anatomy of female intrasexual competition - that it is not writ large on culture but occurs in the smallprint.
Male intrasexual competition is largely overt. Female intrasexual competition is largely covert.
There are sound reasons why women have evolved psychological mechanisms to compete covertly, which are well documented within the evolutionary literature. Today we appear to be stuck at an impasse between women openly demanding they be allowed to compete for power and influence whilst also claiming that they are above such “pettiness.” Yet it is not petty. It is deadly.
One of the main responses I get when demonstrating women engage in female intra-competition is that my motivation is petty jealousy. When men are accused of rivalry, it is rarely dismissed as petty. Even when it is, most people are far too savvy to fall for it. Male intra-competition is a mechanism of meritocracy. The fallacy of the ad hominem attack exists for us to discern when a critique is valid or not. Yet, all female responses to claims they are competing are met with ad hominem responses.
Female intra-competition is real, inevitable, and very powerful. My aim is to get them to admit it and do it as rationally as possible, rather than being led by the nose by primal evolutionary instincts. As women step out of the shadows of power, so must their power politics. Especially when feminists are demanding 50/50 representation in the corridors of power. There are only two reasons to maintain the archaic myth that females do not engage in competition: one is ignorance and the other is to avoid accountability. So, are women ignorant? I doubt many would want to admit to that, though most (though not all) are ignorant of the fact that, in terms of proximate and ultimate explanations, the right-hand often does not know what the left-hand is doing. Paradoxically, those women who are aware of these mechanisms will not be happy either to admit overt Machiavellianism. Yet I say, women cannot have it both ways.
Today the lack of accountability in our feminized culture, politics, and institutions – from Claudine Gay to Fani Willis, to Hillary Clinton – is endemic.
Hillary Clinton is one of the most powerful women on the planet, yet her favored strategy of attack is one of ad hominem. She is the one who, without a shred of evidence, attacks Tulsi Gabbard for being a Russian asset. No one takes her to task on this. That, I assert, is profoundly sexist.
The derogation of a rival’s character is the go-to tactic for women. Casting aspersions on a rival’s sexual reputation, on her sanity, on her motives, on her character. Men created the ad hominem fallacy to warn others that they, men themselves, are engaging in a cheat, a sleight of hand. Male intrasexual competition created such mechanisms to check itself. Yet we are all too willing to accept this when it comes from women, and so let them off the hook from having to defend their position by addressing the real issues at hand. As our culture has feminized, we see more and more men allowing and engaging in these tactics themselves. Men intellectually cuckolding themselves for a smile from the lady. Politics has become a high school popularity contest. Men need to man up. Women need to own up.
Women like Clinton are not ignorant. They know most women eschew direct competition and use that fact against them. They, to paraphrase Shakespeare, speak covert enmity under the smile of safetyism. The cult of empathy, equality, diversity, and inclusion is a front for naked ambition, self-interest, tyranny, and ostracism. This isn’t just happening on the left either.
We all, men and women, need to adjust our priors when it comes to women. Women are just as corruptible by power and egotism as men.
Since the beginning of recorded history, from the Illiad to Jack Reacher, from Sun Zu to Machiavelli, vast libraries exist and are filled with tales in all genres of the mechanisms and machinations of male intrasexual competition and warfare. Today, there exists perhaps one meager shelf in one of these libraries about the mechanisms and machinations of female intrasexual competition and warfare. My thesis states only that if women want to walk in the corridors of power they must also come out of the shadows. Compete in the open, play by the rules that have evolved via millions of years of trial and error, do not try to change them, and most of all, be accountable. Great power extends beyond your ego. We do not live in Roman times when a woman had to hide her ambition under a bushel. You are not Livia Drusilla.
If you want to help civilization flourish, compete and own it.
For more on female intrasexual competition see
We Need To Talk About Karen
I met my first Karen when I was 11 years old. Her name was Hayley. And this is a true story.
A good case study would be the struggle between the TERF and post modernist feminists.
What would be some good examples, hypothetical or realized, of a woman competing in harmony with her nature while doing so for a noble ends and via noble means? Or…is my question oversimplified by my word “noble”?