A lot of truth to this one. Women, as a general rule, are at LEAST as competitive as men. and as hostile too, they just express it differently so its sometimes less obvious if you don't know what to look for.
Speaking of business advice. Is it best to adopt a complementary status to a customer seeking a bid on a project? E.g if he's an alpha, adopt bravo characteristics?
It's more important to focus on avoiding the profile's negative triggers. Don't challenge an Alpha. Don't call a Gamma on his BS. Don't imply that a Delta is incompetent or unreliable.
The main problem is that you didn't consider how doing the work to assess value and bidding fairly and profitably could be totally irrelevant to the customer, given his SSH profile.
When my daughter was a toddler, my wife and I went on vacation for a few days and left her with my mother. Unbeknownst to us, my mother decided my daughter's hair was "too messy" and cut it without asking us first. We arrived home to find our beautiful baby girl with a bowl haircut. My wife, needless to say, went ballistic; I was barely able to contain Fists of Fury. I told my mother that it was high time we get her to the airport, and by the way, don't plan on watching our kids ever again. She acted like she didn't know she had done anything wrong, dropping chestnuts like "you never told me not to cut her hair blah blah blah".
I submit this anecdote for commentary and analysis here, because I'd love to share this group's thoughts with my wife, who still fumes about it 20 years later (as she should).
One note of context: she did everything she possibly could to raise my brother and I as Gammas. Both he and I knew something was wrong, but obviously we were too young to know exactly what. I will leave to others to judge how well she did.
She was poking at your wife. Take a bite and see what happens. If nothing, bite bigger. You stood up to your mother in support of your wife and child. That is the correct response. It's also strongly anti-Gamma IMO. Doesn't mean your mother will suddenly be kind and gentle. Just means you set the limit and held the line. There will be no more escalation. I expect there were plenty of smaller bites before this big one. That is where the line needs to be set in hind sight. Don't take crap from anyone. Even family. Or your daughter might be unexpectedly scalped. Your wife is angry over the aggressive move for power at her child's expense. Your mother also stole the accolades and reactions for a beautiful child that your wife would have been receiving up until that point. That's a special time your wife can't get back. That, using the child, crosses a line. Your wife's mama bear was triggered and she will continue to protect that child from a person that should have been just as ferociously in your daughter's corner. In fact that should have been the one point of unity for them. The role of the matriarch is to use her wisdom and power to protect and advance the progeny.
"She was poking at your wife. Take a bite and see what happens. If nothing, bite bigger. "
I am sure you are right. She was trying to bait my wife into the dance. What she loves to do is fuck up like that and then apologize profusely. THEN, you are forced to do the "it's OK, no that's fine, what's done is done, don't worry about it, you're fine." Which of course means YOU end up being the one who surrenders your boundary. In this instance, when my mom started apologizing, my wife's natural instinct was to offer comfort. I told my wife "do NOT say 'it's fine'. You stay angry and you let her see that you are still angry. The apology is not an apology, it is a plea for surrender on HER terms."
Yes. You nailed it. That is exactly how it works. Good on you for holding the line. Getting away with pissing on your wife and having your wife say thank you is what gets these kinds of women off. There is only one solution and it's a less rocky road where you get to keep your dignity. Call it out and hold the line.
The biggest practice was the constant praise for things we hadn't earned. Our achievements were praised because we were special, not because the action deserved merit. That drove me nuts from the earliest age. We deserved to be a starter, and if we weren't it was because the coach just couldn't see how good we were. Never was the advice "maybe you should get more reps" or "well if this is what you want, you'll have to work harder." We had "superpowers" that few others than her could see. God, it makes me feel gross just typing that out.
Then there was the constant victim manipulation, whereby she would start conflicts, we would try to avoid them, she would escalate, and then there would be a shouting, crying resolution followed by us being forced to apologize, topped off with a wall-of-text 10 page handwritten letter about how no one cared for us like she did, and she had given everything for us etc. Wow, the feeling of release I had the first time I crumpled up a letter and threw it away without reading it. She later tried via email and text, to which my reply was "I did not read one word of this, nor will I ever."
There is much more. My brother is still tangled in a lot of it to this day. My mom and I don't have much to talk about anymore, which is sad.
I watched a “nice” female sort through girls-night-out pictures to post the very best of herself and very worst of her friends. Competition and sabotage across the board.
A side note to this story. We had another cousin that was ultra beautiful & I feel like my scissor-hand cousin would not have even attempted to do this to the beauty queen cousin -- are some hills too high to climb / resistance is futile ? Or maybe she would've, obviously my judgement was off. Whatever the case its a valuable friendship screening tool that I acquired at an early age (the hard way)
A bridge too far, yes. I was the oldest girl out of all of us cousins and was untouchable. If a gal is situated high enough above the others, she’s not in the same competitive circle.
I don't know but it is possible that you and your cousin were competing for the same type of men where as your ultra beautiful cousin was simply into different tastes or that league was just to high. Note that it only matters if you cousin perceived you to be into the same kind of men she was. Reality is irrelevant in this case.
Besides my longer hair, I was kinda a tomboy. Scissor hands was preppy & I was more heavy metal -- maybe marring the beauty queen is just too conspicuous. I dont feel like it was a long time premeditated thing -- I think at times we all succumb to being a tool for the enemy. Satan is a brilliant psychologist & well aware the differences men/women and baits the hook accordingly. Defacing things has his fingerprints all over it
Had a family discussion about this. A few things came up:
1) Mean Girls resonates for a reason. It's the classic queen bee holding power with her flying monkeys.
2) In Little Women, Jo March burns off her beautiful older sister's hair accidentally before a ball. Jo's "one beauty" is her hair.
3) The competition requires stealth for plausible deniability. One doesn't want to be outed as mean or sabotaging as the Glenn Close character was in the end of Dangerous Liaisons because that would be social ruin.
4) It doesn't ever end. 1939's The Women is all about married women socialites jockeying for dominant position. However, the one most people are familiar with is the classic mother- in- law. Left handed "complements" and "help/advice" that is mean and undermining for the wife. Marie Barone is the classic TV example.
5) Apparently I forgot one. Matron sabotage on behalf of progeny against rivals, eg Cinderella.
I doubt men notice much of these things, but in modern society it is just as critical to understand these dynamics as the male SSH, because we in the west are more than 50% women in University, in many professions and rapidly equalizing in all other areas. Unless; as the author of this Substack has pointed out: you want your a$$ (or hair) handed to you by surprise, it is better to be aware of these dynamics and nip things in the bud.
I mentioned this female competitive tendency to a girlfriend in the past and she proceeded to tell me that when her "best friend" has shorter hair than she does, her friend always suggests for varying alleged reasons that she cut hers too. At one time her friend had gotten her own hair cut noticeably shorter than her and commented that she also needed a trim to keep her hair healthy, even offering to cut it for her despite having no experience whatsoever.
My girlfriend immediately said no, apparently aware of the pattern and that it was for ulterior reasons. She has long, beautiful hair that reaches to her lower back. No one is cutting her hair anytime soon.
Males don't engage in behavior like this. Sabatoge and undermining like this in adolescent males is a sign of a mental condition or lack of proper upbringing coupled with that.
It's impossible to truly understand because it isn't in our nature.
Unless they're a gamma (said for the lulz. Btfo gammas)
Males do. The sabotage may revolved less around physical appearance and is more often aimed at reputation or success. This behavior pattern may not be all men, but a certain profile of men is deeply committed to undermining other men (and sometimes women). "Unless they're a gamma" is the truest part of what your wrote.
Respect-driven Deltas cannot imagine men sabotaging and undermining. Loyalty-driven Bravos probably have difficulty imagining it, too. For Gammas, it's just another day that ends in "y." There are legions of Iago-type characters out there who will gladly offer "helpful" advice that they know is setting up the other person for failure and destruction.
Do Alphas sabotage and undermine? Alphas (or those good at reading Alphas), please weigh in. Hollywood portrayals of Alphas who are spurned or challenged frequently attempt revenge through sabotage, but these characters are often written by Gammas, which makes them unhelpful. In a situation where fists aren't an option, would an Alpha sabotage reputation or offer bad business advice to someone perceived as a rival?
Gammas don't take nearly as many punches as they ought to. Many have never been punched at all. They can be very good at undermining and sabotaging, but they run from conflict.
The only punch that a Gamma reliably takes is one that he doesn't see coming, which is rare. Gamma radar is well attuned to provocation and anger. Gammas need this sense of trigger their flight response. Even if cornered and with nowhere to run, a Gamma will desperately plea and struggle to avoid direct conflict.
Correct. Men would either respect, ignore, or disrespect. If they respect the man with the advantage, often they would either aim to learn or emulate to improve themselves, or at least to follow them. To ignore is just that. And in case of disrespect, it would be much more open, and intended for a much more active-aggressive challenge.
Dinner di inggris
A lot of truth to this one. Women, as a general rule, are at LEAST as competitive as men. and as hostile too, they just express it differently so its sometimes less obvious if you don't know what to look for.
I have learned not to befriend women who encourage me to cut my long hair short.
Speaking of business advice. Is it best to adopt a complementary status to a customer seeking a bid on a project? E.g if he's an alpha, adopt bravo characteristics?
It's more important to focus on avoiding the profile's negative triggers. Don't challenge an Alpha. Don't call a Gamma on his BS. Don't imply that a Delta is incompetent or unreliable.
What about sigmas?
Don't tell them what to do or assume they share your priorities.
Or, you could do the work to assess the value to the customer, and bid fairly and profitably with that in mind.
You're completely missing the point and totally failing to understand the benefits of applying the SSH to a situation.
I hadn't considered avoiding negative triggers.
The main problem is that you didn't consider how doing the work to assess value and bidding fairly and profitably could be totally irrelevant to the customer, given his SSH profile.
When my daughter was a toddler, my wife and I went on vacation for a few days and left her with my mother. Unbeknownst to us, my mother decided my daughter's hair was "too messy" and cut it without asking us first. We arrived home to find our beautiful baby girl with a bowl haircut. My wife, needless to say, went ballistic; I was barely able to contain Fists of Fury. I told my mother that it was high time we get her to the airport, and by the way, don't plan on watching our kids ever again. She acted like she didn't know she had done anything wrong, dropping chestnuts like "you never told me not to cut her hair blah blah blah".
I submit this anecdote for commentary and analysis here, because I'd love to share this group's thoughts with my wife, who still fumes about it 20 years later (as she should).
One note of context: she did everything she possibly could to raise my brother and I as Gammas. Both he and I knew something was wrong, but obviously we were too young to know exactly what. I will leave to others to judge how well she did.
She was poking at your wife. Take a bite and see what happens. If nothing, bite bigger. You stood up to your mother in support of your wife and child. That is the correct response. It's also strongly anti-Gamma IMO. Doesn't mean your mother will suddenly be kind and gentle. Just means you set the limit and held the line. There will be no more escalation. I expect there were plenty of smaller bites before this big one. That is where the line needs to be set in hind sight. Don't take crap from anyone. Even family. Or your daughter might be unexpectedly scalped. Your wife is angry over the aggressive move for power at her child's expense. Your mother also stole the accolades and reactions for a beautiful child that your wife would have been receiving up until that point. That's a special time your wife can't get back. That, using the child, crosses a line. Your wife's mama bear was triggered and she will continue to protect that child from a person that should have been just as ferociously in your daughter's corner. In fact that should have been the one point of unity for them. The role of the matriarch is to use her wisdom and power to protect and advance the progeny.
"She was poking at your wife. Take a bite and see what happens. If nothing, bite bigger. "
I am sure you are right. She was trying to bait my wife into the dance. What she loves to do is fuck up like that and then apologize profusely. THEN, you are forced to do the "it's OK, no that's fine, what's done is done, don't worry about it, you're fine." Which of course means YOU end up being the one who surrenders your boundary. In this instance, when my mom started apologizing, my wife's natural instinct was to offer comfort. I told my wife "do NOT say 'it's fine'. You stay angry and you let her see that you are still angry. The apology is not an apology, it is a plea for surrender on HER terms."
Yes. You nailed it. That is exactly how it works. Good on you for holding the line. Getting away with pissing on your wife and having your wife say thank you is what gets these kinds of women off. There is only one solution and it's a less rocky road where you get to keep your dignity. Call it out and hold the line.
Thanks brother.
How did she attempt to raise you as gammas?
The biggest practice was the constant praise for things we hadn't earned. Our achievements were praised because we were special, not because the action deserved merit. That drove me nuts from the earliest age. We deserved to be a starter, and if we weren't it was because the coach just couldn't see how good we were. Never was the advice "maybe you should get more reps" or "well if this is what you want, you'll have to work harder." We had "superpowers" that few others than her could see. God, it makes me feel gross just typing that out.
Then there was the constant victim manipulation, whereby she would start conflicts, we would try to avoid them, she would escalate, and then there would be a shouting, crying resolution followed by us being forced to apologize, topped off with a wall-of-text 10 page handwritten letter about how no one cared for us like she did, and she had given everything for us etc. Wow, the feeling of release I had the first time I crumpled up a letter and threw it away without reading it. She later tried via email and text, to which my reply was "I did not read one word of this, nor will I ever."
There is much more. My brother is still tangled in a lot of it to this day. My mom and I don't have much to talk about anymore, which is sad.
Sorry to go off topic, thanks for the indulgence.
Thanks. Much of an individual's SSH rank is formed during their formative years I've heard so this is useful
I didn't even go into what she tried to teach me about women. Egads.
I watched a “nice” female sort through girls-night-out pictures to post the very best of herself and very worst of her friends. Competition and sabotage across the board.
A side note to this story. We had another cousin that was ultra beautiful & I feel like my scissor-hand cousin would not have even attempted to do this to the beauty queen cousin -- are some hills too high to climb / resistance is futile ? Or maybe she would've, obviously my judgement was off. Whatever the case its a valuable friendship screening tool that I acquired at an early age (the hard way)
A bridge too far, yes. I was the oldest girl out of all of us cousins and was untouchable. If a gal is situated high enough above the others, she’s not in the same competitive circle.
I don't know but it is possible that you and your cousin were competing for the same type of men where as your ultra beautiful cousin was simply into different tastes or that league was just to high. Note that it only matters if you cousin perceived you to be into the same kind of men she was. Reality is irrelevant in this case.
Besides my longer hair, I was kinda a tomboy. Scissor hands was preppy & I was more heavy metal -- maybe marring the beauty queen is just too conspicuous. I dont feel like it was a long time premeditated thing -- I think at times we all succumb to being a tool for the enemy. Satan is a brilliant psychologist & well aware the differences men/women and baits the hook accordingly. Defacing things has his fingerprints all over it
Had a family discussion about this. A few things came up:
1) Mean Girls resonates for a reason. It's the classic queen bee holding power with her flying monkeys.
2) In Little Women, Jo March burns off her beautiful older sister's hair accidentally before a ball. Jo's "one beauty" is her hair.
3) The competition requires stealth for plausible deniability. One doesn't want to be outed as mean or sabotaging as the Glenn Close character was in the end of Dangerous Liaisons because that would be social ruin.
4) It doesn't ever end. 1939's The Women is all about married women socialites jockeying for dominant position. However, the one most people are familiar with is the classic mother- in- law. Left handed "complements" and "help/advice" that is mean and undermining for the wife. Marie Barone is the classic TV example.
5) Apparently I forgot one. Matron sabotage on behalf of progeny against rivals, eg Cinderella.
I doubt men notice much of these things, but in modern society it is just as critical to understand these dynamics as the male SSH, because we in the west are more than 50% women in University, in many professions and rapidly equalizing in all other areas. Unless; as the author of this Substack has pointed out: you want your a$$ (or hair) handed to you by surprise, it is better to be aware of these dynamics and nip things in the bud.
That sounds like another article by VoxDay!
I mentioned this female competitive tendency to a girlfriend in the past and she proceeded to tell me that when her "best friend" has shorter hair than she does, her friend always suggests for varying alleged reasons that she cut hers too. At one time her friend had gotten her own hair cut noticeably shorter than her and commented that she also needed a trim to keep her hair healthy, even offering to cut it for her despite having no experience whatsoever.
My girlfriend immediately said no, apparently aware of the pattern and that it was for ulterior reasons. She has long, beautiful hair that reaches to her lower back. No one is cutting her hair anytime soon.
"The sheer ruthlessness of female competition is beyond male comprehension"
As the level/strength of the male sex drive is incomprehensible to women.
"so they choose to make statements that imply they don’t care"
Empowering.
but against what?
The competition.
Males don't engage in behavior like this. Sabatoge and undermining like this in adolescent males is a sign of a mental condition or lack of proper upbringing coupled with that.
It's impossible to truly understand because it isn't in our nature.
Unless they're a gamma (said for the lulz. Btfo gammas)
Males do. The sabotage may revolved less around physical appearance and is more often aimed at reputation or success. This behavior pattern may not be all men, but a certain profile of men is deeply committed to undermining other men (and sometimes women). "Unless they're a gamma" is the truest part of what your wrote.
Respect-driven Deltas cannot imagine men sabotaging and undermining. Loyalty-driven Bravos probably have difficulty imagining it, too. For Gammas, it's just another day that ends in "y." There are legions of Iago-type characters out there who will gladly offer "helpful" advice that they know is setting up the other person for failure and destruction.
Do Alphas sabotage and undermine? Alphas (or those good at reading Alphas), please weigh in. Hollywood portrayals of Alphas who are spurned or challenged frequently attempt revenge through sabotage, but these characters are often written by Gammas, which makes them unhelpful. In a situation where fists aren't an option, would an Alpha sabotage reputation or offer bad business advice to someone perceived as a rival?
Boys (and men too) who try this sort of stuff usually take a few punches very quickly.
Gammas don't take nearly as many punches as they ought to. Many have never been punched at all. They can be very good at undermining and sabotaging, but they run from conflict.
The only punch that a Gamma reliably takes is one that he doesn't see coming, which is rare. Gamma radar is well attuned to provocation and anger. Gammas need this sense of trigger their flight response. Even if cornered and with nowhere to run, a Gamma will desperately plea and struggle to avoid direct conflict.
Exactly
Correct. Men would either respect, ignore, or disrespect. If they respect the man with the advantage, often they would either aim to learn or emulate to improve themselves, or at least to follow them. To ignore is just that. And in case of disrespect, it would be much more open, and intended for a much more active-aggressive challenge.