The Question of Men, Women, Stress, Hierarchy, Complaint and Conformity

Responding to my piece on "Yes, Young Liberal Women Have Mental Health Issues, But..." regular reader Sara reminds my that my notion of the women's Culture of Complaint was corrected a while back by a woman red.hibiscus who wrote:

I don’t agree that woman have a Culture of Complaint. That is what men perceive, not what women experience... The actual culture is a Culture of Conformity. Negative tools are shame, guilt, threat of expulsion. The civilized version is rule of community ties and on-the-ground social ties, eg family.

Perfectly correct. Actually I would say that, in a perfect world, men have a Culture of Courage. After a couple of drinks it descends into a Culture of Insult. In a perfect world, women have a Culture of Conformity. After a couple of disagreements, it descends into a Culture of Complaint. Ying and Yang, and all that.

The piece on Liberal Women got into the question of "stress" which I think is a Girl Thing. I also think that "mental health issues" has a lot to do with women experiencing conflict in the man-designed public square. Conflict is part of the game for men, but intolerable for women.

In view of all this, Sara writes, we need to remember

1) The idea that open confrontation (instead of gossip) is anti-female culture 

2) The idea that stress AKA conflict is intolerable to women and they won't stand for it. 

Men live in a dominance hierarchy, Sara writes, and "see their survival in the world around them as a fight to be on top of the pyramid." But

Women however, because of the nature of their female bodies, necessarily see their own survival in the world around them as a fight to be left alone and survive in an EXISTING CONTEXT set by men.

Actually, I would refine this to say that most men most of the time know their place in the dominance hierarchy, and only occasionally attempt to change it in a fight, a point made by Jordan B. Peterson in his lobster hierarchy argument.

I suppose the same applies to women, wanting to be left alone to run their households and raise children in the context created by marriage, and only occasionally being challenged by the gossip of the women's Culture of Complaint -- which is, no doubt, concerned about the woman in question appearing to violate the Culture of Conformity.

To get all Hegelian we would say that the male Culture of Courage has its negation in the Culture of Insult, while the female Culture of Conformity has its negation in the Culture of Complaint.

I would say that, despite the male hierarchy, there is among men a curious counter-current of equality. When men greet each other with an insult they are expressing that notion: "hey, pal, you are no better than I am." And, for instance, when I had my interview with billionaire Steve Ballmer I was careful to treat him as an equal, and behave as though I expected to be treated as an equal.

And I think that in the women's Culture of Conformity that asserts an equality among women there is a hidden hierarchy that every woman knows but nobody talks about. The Culture of Complaint is all about adjusting that hidden hierarchy.

Also, another woman corrected me on the Culture of Complaint saying that the ideal among women is Kindness. (This explains the last line on the virtue-signaling #WeBelieve yard sign that insists "Kindness is Everything").

I suspect that the Culture of Conformity and the Culture of Kindness are different aspects of the same thing.

Don't ask me how all this aligns with the left's insistence that everything is a social construction, except when it isn't.