Women are both collectivist and hierarchical, but express these in different instances. The first instance is always collectivist, but then the second instance is always hierarchical.
If we consider their psyche when pure of all other influences, there is a sequence of concerns they consider when discerning how new information impacts them:
- the integrity of themselves
- the integrity of women in general (daughters, mother, friends, any others)
- the integrity of a potential self (i.e. if said information could have potentially impacted their integrity in an alternate life)
- the integrity of any potential woman (i.e. if said information could impact the integrity of any woman of any kind, even if such a woman isn’t known to her personally)
- the integrity of any persons important to her (sons, father, husband, friends, etc.)
Women’s first instance of collectivism is usually in defence of the collective. The sequence is not a sequence of processes where they would consider the first and then the next, but rather it is a sequence of priority that is immediately processed in one instance. Because it is immediate and not by sequential consideration, the magnitude of their response and the associated emotions are generally equal irrespective of which concern they “stop” at. It is not something women deduce through discursive thought, but rather comes to them instantaneously.
They first prioritise themselves, so if the information is directly relevant to themselves, their initial address will be according to how it is relevant to themselves and not according to its relevance to any others. If others are mentioned, it will be according to the above hierarchy of priority. If the information has no immediate relevance to themselves, then their initial address will concern women they know who would be impacted, and so on down the list.
The second instance in women is their hierarchical impulse. Now information is being considered not in defence but is processed according to a prescribed sense of “social order” they believe essential within certain contexts. Women pass to the second instance when there is no information that currently concerns the first instance. Information of the second instance concerns the same groups they would have otherwise defended in the first instance.
They take the information and make these judgements immediately:
- impact on their own social status (anxiety, ego)
- impact on the social status of women within their circles (gossip, security)
- impact on the social status of women in other circles (moralism, scandal)
- impact on the social status of men personally known to them (elevation, degradation)
- impact on the social status of men in general (praise, condemnation)
Women’s second instance is notably more complex compared to the simplicity of her first instance. This is to be expected, as she now reorganises the collective into a hierarchy of social tiers. She does not consider the hierarchy as if she were examining a hierarchy that existed prior to her examining it, but rather her active consideration of the hierarchy is in itself making the hierarchy.
Why we isolate her second instance from her first is because the second can only rise from out the first: it is only in the stable integrity of the uniform, i.e. collective, that she can then organise it into many superior and inferior parts. And just as quickly as she had organised it into hierarchy, she can then dissolve it back into a simple collective should new circumstances demand she address the integrity of the collective over her “hierarchising” of the collective.
COHERENCE OF CONTRADICTING SOCIAL OPINION
By this women can be found to vigorously and publicly defend the integrity of her social group while simultaneously holding very contrary opinions against individuals within said group. When the group is not under threat, she will unconsciously perceive each person within it to be submitted to an intrinsic social hierarchy. The social dynamics of the group will then begin to be shaped by this perceived hierarchy as she actively uses her language and relations to each of the persons to promote or demote according to the hierarchy she innately attempts to actualise.
Rifts within women’s social groups generally arise when women attempt to actualise contradicting hierarchies within the same group. Because the process is entirely innate and committed to unconsciously, it is difficult for women to resolve the contradictions discursively. This can make conflict within groups of women sometimes seem spontaneous, bewildering the involved how such bitter resentment generated so quickly from seemingly nowhere.
At social crisis where women within a group are openly opposed to one another, the women most contentious in their imposition of contradicting social hierarchies will attempt to collectivise other similarly disposed women within the group into a singularity so to take advantage of their collective solidarity. Now returned to their first instance of collectivism, the spark of crisis among them will usually dissipate as quickly as it flared up: privileging their union over their segregation, the tide of preference will quickly shift towards one, resulting in the other woman either submitting or, most often, ejecting herself entirely from the group.
SUBTLE MODE OF HIERARCHISATION
Contradictions of hierarchy within a group very rarely flare immediately, however. Owing to their primary insistence upon collectivisation, often their craft of “hierarchising” the internals of a group is achieved through ‘soft power’. Passive aggression, gossip, and rumours, or special preferential treatment and priority of support are methods of actualising hierarchy without direct confrontation. Direct confrontation is frowned upon because it is an act which violates collectivism, confrontations quickly psychically dragging the women involved to concern themselves with the integrity of the group.
By engaging other group members one-on-one, women conceptualise the hierarchy and attempt to realise it through the dynamics of their relationships with each of the persons. Women both give and receive impressions through their interactions with one another. They are highly sensitive to these impressions and effortlessly mend themselves to them, quickly attaining a ‘mental map’ of a group’s inner relations and dynamics, hence women’s remarkable social capacity and awareness.
SPECIAL UTILITY
The actual utility of women’s twofold social nature can be understood as an instinctual mechanism where women perpetually test the ‘fitness’ of other women by their relentless hierarchising and rejecting. By this process, the women who attain and retain the acclaim of other women will generally be the ‘fittest’, these women typically appealing the most to men. They first privilege the collective, however, and most specifically the collective of women, because the survival of women has long historically relied upon communal cohesion and the human instinct of prioritising the concerns of women over that of men’s.
Rather than presuming that the instinct of privileging the survival and health of women over that of men’s to be present only among men, it is clear that this instinct is universal to both sexes. This instinct of self-prioritisation intrinsic to women is typically moralised by men to be driven by a woman’s selfishness, but this is an erroneous conclusion.
Men tend to presume that the mental life of women is like his own, and so selfish acts are thought to be premeditated and deliberate, coloured by a moral knowledge that it is self-promotion at the expense of others. Women’s self-prioritisation is amoral and often so intimate with her natural behaviour she doesn’t even know herself to be doing it. Hence why when she is accused of being selfish, she is often confused and surprised and will find it hard to comprehend how he came to the conclusion. The question is made coherent when we know the instinct to preserve the female sex is innate to women as well.
Hence then we find also their intent to preserve the integrity of all women, whether that be in health, social status, or reputation. The compulsion of self-preservation engendered by this instinct to privilege female survival causes women to self-identify with all women. So, unlike men who generally are indifferent to generalising remarks because the foundation of their sense of self is individualist, women can take the breaking of any woman’s integrity as being equivalent to breaking her own integrity.
Herein lies the origin of her extensive empathy, she is desirous of stability and status quo and so promotes peace by impulse of her empathy. Any slander, insult, or critique of a woman she sees herself grouped with, even if that group is as broad and as general as “woman”, she will quickly internalise to be equivalent to an assault upon herself. Thus we find cause for women’s strong capacity to mobilise quickly as a collective against social threats, even when the circumstance or event is very remote to them individually.
Apotheism 