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Notes -
Status operates on two axes, and in slightly different ways for men and women.
Refer to these two charts.
Men \ Women
Hard status for men is measured in physical power that exists as an extension of nature. This is, essentially, the kind of power that the man alone in the jungle wields. This is measured in a combination of physical strength, height, masculinity, physical presence, muscularity, weight, aggression, age, and any other number of tangible, measurable physical characteristics.
Hard status for women is similar, in that it reflects a tangible physical reality, however the basis of judgment is different. For women, hard status is measured in sex appeal, beauty, charisma, charm, cuteness, fertility, height, size, and any other number of tangible physical characteristics.
Soft status for men and women operates the same. Soft status refers to anything outside of the physical that is useful for manipulation of others. Money, class, intellectualism, luxury beliefs, high status values, intelligence, persuasion, word and resource access and manipulation- these are many of the qualities that make up soft status.
I’ve already filled in the charts with some examples of people and where they sit. I have mostly just imagined the most extreme types of each person and then filled in with random interesting people between them- you could move the 0,0 point somewhere else and categorize people differently if you have a different set of examples but these are the people who came to mind as most illustrative of my theory.
For men, the four quadrants are labeled The Saint, The King, The Outcast, and The Caveman.
The Saint represents a man with high soft status but low hard status. The most extreme example is Stephen Hawking, a quadriplegic whose life work was entirely abstract. Religious men with modest physicalities are other Saints. Liberace, a man with little sex appeal but lots of luxury, is a Saint. Anderson Cooper and Elijah Wood are pretty men, though Anderson’s class lends him higher soft status compared with Elijah whose height and hobbitness place him lower on the scale of soft status.
The King is a man with high soft status as well as high hard status. He is best exemplified today by Prince William, who is strapping and, being next in line to the throne of the UK, very high in soft status. Trump is a King, despite the abstract hatred of him from intellectuals, because his vibe says King. King Charles II, a bit old and wishy-washy, is literally a King, but less so than others. Certain elegant men and admired athletes as well as traditional father figures also lie in the King quadrant.
The Caveman is someone who has high hard status but low soft status. The most extreme example is Fred Flintstone (or really, a stereotypical caveman might be better, but I couldn’t think of one.) He is very powerful, but his power is entirely physical, being forced to work under the higher soft status boss in his day job. Strong, violent athletes with little soft power belong in this quadrant. Handsome actors without much cache, powerful Middle Eastern men often belong in this category (from the viewpoint of white christendom.)
The Outcast is a man with low soft status as well as low hard status. The most extreme examples are Adam Lanza and TJ Lane- but any school shooter will do. Michael Jackson and Jeffrey Dahmer also fit the bill. Most trans men, short and cuddly, lie somewhere in this area. They are unthreatening to power, generally.
The quadrants for women are The Queen, The Princess, The Hag, and The Whore.
The Queen has high soft power and low hard power. She is best exemplified by Ellen Degeneres: Creepy, mannish, cold, vampiric, and really unsexual. Oprah, Anna Wintour and Tilda Swinton are similarly Queens. Girl bosses like Laverne Cox and Nicki Minaj exist as Queens. Bette Davis is a queen on account of her unfortunate looks. Betty Friedan is close to the Hag, but her luxurious beliefs in feminism push her over the edge into Queen territory.
The Princess has high soft power and high hard power. Kate Middleton is the best example of the Princess today. She is literally a princess, with beauty and soft power. Jackie Kennedy and Melania Trump are also Princesses. Andreja Pejic, a trans woman, could be in a similar position to Laverne Cox, but is more beautiful and gets less points for diversity, and is thus further to the right and further down on the chart.
The Whore is a woman high in hard power but low in soft power. Internet celebrities Danielle Bregoli (You remember her- the Catch Me Outside Dr. Phil girl) and Woahvicky (known for her bizarre accent) are the most extreme examples of the Whore- they are sexy and don’t have much soft status to speak of. Snooki, Mae West, Trisha Paytas, Marilyn Monroe- they all fall somewhere in this quadrant.
The Hag is a women with low hard power and low soft power. I had a hard time thinking of real life examples of these women, as generally, the lower a woman has in hard power, she tends to be raised up in terms of soft power by other women. Andrea Dworkin is quite ugly and I’d place her in Hag territory even though her feminist beliefs are very high status for women. Fictional characters like Strangers with Candy’s Jerri Blank and Reno 911’s Trudy Wiegel are good examples of the Hag.
Where would you place Meghan Markle? I don’t really like her. I could see her in any quadrant of the four, so I put her near the middle.
Throughout our lives, we may change position on the chart. For example, Christina Aguilera in her earliest roles on the Mickey Mouse Club, was a Princess, who then moved to Whore territory upon release of her video Dirrty, and has since ascended to Queen status as a 44 year old plus size girl boss. Similarly, Britney Spears started out as a Princess, then moved to Whore status as she was a bit older, and now is probably somewhere between the Hag and the Whore depending on how hot you find her. Pamela Anderson spent most of her life in the Whore category, but recently stopped wearing makeup and has aged in to the Queen status.
Women tend to move from right to left on the chart as they age, but men tend to move from the left to the right until they reach their mid to late 50s after which they tend to move to the left as well.
Women who marry multiple times tend to pick second and third husbands who are farther to the right than earlier husbands. They may be either higher or lower in soft status, but later partners are almost always higher in hard status. This often frustrates earlier husbands who see their ex-wives with men who may be lower in soft status but higher in hard status, and who place too much emphasis on their own soft status at the expense of their own hard status.
I am sure that, as a man, winning at hard status is gratifying, while winning at soft status feels dorky. But I want to know if women feel the same way or if the opposite is true. Do women feel more gratified being Ellen Degeneres or more gratified being Marilyn Monroe?
If I were to rank the women’s quadrants, I believe you’d want to be the Princess the most, followed by the Queen, followed by the Hag, and then the Whore. The Whore really has no dignity, she is defined entirely by the man or the view of men toward her. At least the Hag gets to retain some dignity of owning her rejection in the man’s eyes. Perhaps that is a masculine projection on my part. The Princess is more dignified than the Queen because she gets to retain powers of seduction toward men which is valuable.
I would most want to be in the King quadrant as a man. After that, I would rank the Caveman as the second most appealing. Between the Saint and the Outcast it is a hard decision- I at least view the Outcast as having some dignity in that he’s doing it his way, regardless of everyone else’s desires. The Saint seems smarmy and gross, as much as I’m drawn to be Liberace I find the quadrant somehow more degrading than any other.
Status and Homosexuality
I’ll keep this short because I’ve rambled about this enough on themotte in the past. As a younger gay man, I didn’t understand why the soft status game was so ungratifying. I could be Liberace with little to no effort on my part. But Liberace- and gay men like him- have little to no actual status among gay men. Even entirely destitute gay men aren’t charmed by the money of a rich man. Likewise, when you are the rich man, it is not gratifying to charm a man with your money. The average gay man may pay for sex once or twice in his twenties, or when he comes into money, but he’ll find that it doesn’t gratify the ego in any way that matters. It feels cheap, fake, and dishonest to wield power in this way. Only through hard power- and earning respect, love and status through hard power- can you feel good about yourself and your place among men.
Status and Trans
So, how does being trans work in the terms of my system of power? MTF Transwomen (people born as men who become women- in my opinion, they are effectively women, because as a gay man I find them as unattractive as women- and similarly I view FTM men as men, because I find them as attractive as men, and in fact having little to no external genitalia to compete with is a plus, not a minus) are men who are pumping the soft power hierarchy at the expense of their hard power. They have chosen not to compete at the hard power game of men, but rather to compete at the hard power game of women, and the soft power game of women, which operates the same as the soft power game of men. In one way, the MTF can only win when he transitions, because his soft power explodes, often placing him from Outcast on the men’s chart into Queen territory on the women’s chart. But she is doing this at the expense of her male hard power. I had trans ideation when I was younger, but the only thing keeping me from becoming trans was the sense that it would never gratify what I really was seeking, which was the hard power status of being a real man. I don’t know if the medication of MTF women can tone down this desire inside- perhaps it can, and perhaps that’s fine if you’re living it, but as an outsider to me it is sad.
Most FTM men begin as women who are in the Hag category. Upon transition they give up their status as Hags and generally swap for an equal place on the male hierarchy which is the Outcast. They have little movement and thus are not as politically threatening to anyone.
In high school I as a boy would grow my hair long and paint my nails and act effeminately because it gave me soft status. When you do this you are increasing soft status at the expense of hard status. The reaction from other boys toward me was a mixture of apathy from those boys who didn’t mind other boys losing hard status, or an irritation at the gaining of soft status at the expense of someone’s masculinity which they were protective of in themselves. I no longer act effeminate because I don’t want to degrade the hard power of myself which is more difficult and more gratifying to harbor in myself.
Status and Race
From my observations, there seem to be differences between races. If we were to chart the people of all races on my chart, it would look something like this. There are many outliers who would rank differently, and you could rank people within the races among themselves, but on average I view the relative status of the races in this way.
Asian people tend to be the highest in soft status and lowest in hard status. Black people tend to be highest in hard status and lowest in soft status. Middle Eastern people are not terribly different from white people in these terms. Latino people may fall anywhere closer to white or black or Asian depending on their particular mixture of genes and nationality, status within their own group and so on. I left out other groups because I either have little to no experience with them or their populations are very small compared to the ones I’ve charted.
The tendency in society is to collapse the nuanced, two-axis reality of status and power into just one hierarchical stack. The left believes that you can do this with race: The whites are above the Blacks, so we must raise the Blacks to make up for the systemic disadvantages that Blacks face. Meanwhile, this fails to account for, in my opinion, the more accurate view of power which observes hard as well as soft status. This is why the left’s favoritism of blacks and their attempts at raising their soft power irritates me so much as a white man- they are already on average above me on the hierarchy of hard power, why must they also be dragged above me in the hierarchy of soft power? In an ideal state of nature, they would be above me in hard power, and I could accept that as my natural talents and powers of soft power position me above them in my own way that is balanced with nature. Having my comfort of soft power dragged away is on some level humiliating to me.
Basically, I don’t think the left- or society- needs to account for any difference between races because they already average out to approximately the same and even then there is a dignity in simply respecting the differences rather than trying to account for them.
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When I was a kid I used to wonder why my older family members would spend so much time watching nature documentaries. The older I get the more I realize that it’s because human society operates so often on the same exact level as nature documentaries do- we just have an extremely complex web of distractions overlaid on top of the underlying hard status game. Disentangling the two reveals a lot.
This is very interesting but please next time, label the axis labels at the top and right, that is at x+/y+
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