POWER: SOFT OR HARD

by vivapatriarchy

Humans are animals and animal societies are built on how sexual dimorphism plays out within the species. In humans the sexual dimorphism favours the males – not only are human males bigger and stronger than females but they are also smarter [1]. Now this raises an interesting question – if men are physically and mentally superior to women how come human society is female dominated? To answer this we have to look at how power works.

Power is the ability to influence the behaviour of others to get the outcomes you want. Now there are two types of power: hard power and soft power [2]. The first is defined as the use of force and money to influence others whiles the latter is the ability to attract and co-opt people. Let’s further examine these different power dynamics.

Hard power is coercive power executed through military threats and economic inducements and is based on tangible resources such as the army or economic. Thus, the American invasion of Iraq in 2003 and its economic sanctions against Iran are examples of the US exercising its hard power. Hard power can be summed by two words; money and muscle.

Soft power aptly named ‘the second face of power‘ is the capacity to persuade others to do what one wants. Persuasive power is based on attraction and emulation and relies on intangible power resources such as culture, ideology and institutions. Since soft power relies on intangible resources it is vital those wielding it can generate legitimacy in order to enhance soft power – trust is vital to soft power.

The dispersion of American culture throughout the world via Hollywood indicates the existence of American soft power. The American film industry has a tremendous reach and influence across the world [3]. Within France, an ally of the US, double the amount of people watch American films than French cinema on average. This figure is even greater in America’s enemies; in Russia its triple and China, Americas biggest rival and next super power in line is responsible for half of the twelve films that reached billionaire box office status since 2011 [4]. This means the next generation of leaders of America’s enemies are being raised on Hollywood films. Obama acknowledged this in a recent speech when he said “Entertainment is part of our American diplomacy, its part of what makes us exceptional, part of what makes us such a world power. You can go anywhere on the planet and you’ll see a kid wearing a ‘Madagascar’ T-shirt. You can say, ‘May the force be with you,’ and they know what you’re talking about.“[5]

Other countries have realised the threat Hollywood poses. Some block or limit the number of foreign films, limit the amount of box office that goes to foreign producers and give support to their film industry, to protect it and help it grow. China for example has limited the number of foreign films in its cinemas to 20 and forces Hollywood to use a domestic distributor receiving 15% of box office receipts compared to America were distributors get 50-55% and 40-45% elsewhere on average. Russia has started to take similar steps since the Ukraine crises [6].

Beyond the numbers Hollywood also moulds perceptions about culture, peoples and even history. Film critic and historian Ed Rampell explains this in Black Hawk Down based on the Battle of Mogadishu “look at Black Hawk Down, the one thing everybody who was watching CNN at the time remembers about that actual real life incident was the dead US servicemen dragged through the dirt in the dust in their underwear by the triumphant Somalis. Where’s that in the movie Black Hawk Down which was heavily supported by the [US] military.”[7]

Access to power resources is what determines how effective the use of each power dynamic will be. When it comes to hard power size matters since large states with higher national income are financially able to maintain large armed forces and put economic pressure on other states. This means smaller states are forced to develop their soft power capabilities since they cannot compete with the large states.

At first it seems time is on the side of hard power because it’s based on tangible resources meaning generating it requires little time. Though, the initial results from military and economic coercion are immediate they are short lived since the nature of hard power means forcing one to act in a way different to one’s usual behaviour doing so involuntarily leading to conflict. In the long run, you realise time actually favours soft power since it changes one’s attitude to the end that one acts voluntarily in a way different to one’s usually behaviour inducing consent. Where hard power coerces soft power co-opts, where hard power is direct soft power is indirect, where hard power is aggressive soft power is passive.

Now geopolitics aside, lets examine how these different power dynamics fit into male-female relationships. The battle of the sexes is a civil war between men and women who are vying for a) resources and b) control. Contrary to feminist dogma gender isn’t a social structure and nature plays a major role in determining each genders tool for battle. Men are bigger, stronger and smarter so they’re naturally disposed to hard power while women being the smaller and weaker sex means they have to rely on soft power. Maybe this is why women are perceived as soft, who knows.

The first component of hard power is physical strength and men dominate this area. To those of disputing this go ahead and watch videos on YouTube of men and women getting into confrontations that turn violent. Women over come this hard power disadvantage by using their soft power to make it socially unacceptable for men to exercise it. Women achieve this via institutions starting with schools. In the UK 97% of nursery school teachers are female and 1/4 of primary schools in the UK are staffed entirely by females. All in all males only represent 12% of primary school teachers [8]. This means these female teachers are free to instill gynocentricism into boys from an early age – boys shouldn’t hit girls translates into don’t exercise your hard power advantages over females. Women’s control of schools means they can potentially modify any lifestyle that threatens them. This could explain why boys get expelled from nursery five times more than girls, are diagnosed with learning disorders and attention problems at nearly four times the rate of girls and nearly three times as likely as girls to be diagnosed with Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder which leads to medications.

The justice system is the second institution women use to curb men’s hard power – it’s the safety net. It’s in place for men who have questioned the social conditioning they have been subjected to since nursery and realised they were being manipulated/exploited. The threat of proxy violence stops these men from exercising their hard power over women. I, for example, would not hit a woman who hit me first, not because I believe it’s morally wrong to hit women but because I don’t want to get arrested, go to jail and get a criminal record hindering my chances of employment in the process [9].

The second component of hard power is money and men dominate women in this area too, but the reasons why this is so aren’t solely down to nature as is the case with the first component of hard power. The monetary advantages men enjoy are due to a mixture of nature and nurture. Work is divided into two fields; jobs that require brawn i.e. manual labour and jobs that require brain i.e. STEM. Men naturally dominate these fields due to sexual dimorphism favouring them. Testosterone which men produce in a higher quantity to women makes them more competitive and more likely to take risks.

Now lets look at how men are nurtured. All men are raised to view themselves as inherently worthless. If men fail there is not safety net and you can see this in homelessness and suicide rates among men. Men have to dig their way out of this hole if they are to get a woman or a place in life. This means work starts to become more than something they do to acquire resources to purchase their basic necessities in life such as food, clothing, shelter and starts to take a whole new meaning. Men start to base their identities on their jobs – success or failure in life determined by how well they can extract resources. This is why men kill themselves after loosing their jobs – the stress of loosing their provision with no safety nets in place to catch them combined with the stress of losing their identity marker which leads to an existential crisis.

Women on the other hand are raised to view themselves as being valuable by virtue of having a vagina. This means women don’t face the pressures men face and this reality is reflected in their career choices. Women like working in safe environments doing jobs that don’t require a lot of physical and mental effort and only half of the time – two thirds of women work part time. Any wonder men earn more money?

Women over come this hard power advantage by getting men to use their resources on them instead of against them, voluntarily or involuntarily. They go about this in two ways; personally and professionally.

In personal relationships women extract money from men using romance. Romance is a money making scheme that comes in the form of pyramid which consists of four levels – dating, LTR, marriage and divorce – each stage more expensive than the previous. It starts off with dating were she demands to be wined and dined which carries onto the second stage called the LTR (long term relationship) which comes with new added expectations on top of the old ones like contributing towards her day to day expenses like food and transportation. The LTR reaches its climax when she convinces him they should “take the relationship to the next level” and move in together, living in his house rent free.

The third stage comes when she pressures or traps the man into marriage. She won’t accept his proposal until he’s on his knee presenting her with three months of his wages in the form of an engagement ring. After she’s done parading the diamond ring to her girlfriends a date is a set for the big day were he will spend on average more than $30,000 [10]. Inside the marriage there will be division of labour – he earns it, she spends it. Here is an excerpt from a Daily Mail article [11] to further illustrate this “Nine out of ten middle-aged women have control over financial planning. More than a third – 36 per cent – said their partner or husband believed he was in control of the purse strings. But, in reality, they controlled the finances and were responsible for making sure bills were paid, balancing the books and keeping on top of household spending, they said. Nine out of ten of the women questioned said they made the decisions on furniture purchases, 92 per cent controlled the buying of large appliances – including TVs, stereos and computers – while 85 per cent said they decided where the family went on holiday. And the majority – 66 per cent – also revealed they had the final say on the family car.“ The situation is the same around the world with some places far less subtle than the situation in the UK. In Japan, the husbands literally hand over their wages over to their unemployed stay at home wives who then give the men ‘pocket money’ out of their salary [12]. No wonder Japan is paving the way for MGTOW.

After marriage comes the divorce were the woman takes the man’s money in multiple ways. First she can claim she can’t afford a lawyer so he has to pay for her lawyer fees on top of his meaning the man has to foot the bill for the whole legal process. Secondly she takes half his assets, whether she contributed towards them or not. Finally she claims child support and alimony from the remainder of his wealth. All in all the man stands to loose 80 to 90% of his wealth becoming a wage slave to her in the process.

In the professional realm women extract money from men indirectly through the government – this is what feminism is about in a nutshell. They achieve this first through the wage gap myth. Manwomanmyth makes an excellent video debunking this myth [13]. In the video he says “Tickets to the Wimbledon men’s final cost £965.00 the women’s final cost £325.00 yet prize money for both sexes is equal.

Add to this that men are required to play much more tennis than women, with men playing best of five sets and women only playing the best of three and men play tennis at much a higher standard than women and that the recruitment for men to play tennis means most male players have no time left to play in other events like the doubles meaning that women are able to earn much more than men at events.” He continues “Prize money in 2012 was £1.1 million with men required to play a minimum of 21 sets to win the prize whereas women were only required to play 14 sets to win the same amount.

As it played out in 2012 Roger Federer played 26 sets to win Wimbledon in contrast Serena Williams played just 17 sets. This means Federer received $44.000 per set whereas Williams received £67.000. That’s a £23.000 pay advantage for women per set and more than %50 higher rate of pay.” So not only did Serena Williams earn more money than Roger Federer per set she also had the opportunity to play in the doubles and pick up another prize.

The unfairness doesn’t end at centre court. Across the Atlantic, the new CEO of Reddit Ellen Pao banned salary negotiations because men are harder negotiators resulting in higher salaries for them. Pao said “If you want more equity, we’ll let you swap a little bit of your cash salary for equity, but we aren’t going to reward people who are better negotiators with more compensation.” [14] By people she means men. How much money are men standing to lose because of this feminist? The article says “not negotiating salaries means you loose $500, 000 by the time you hit 60.” Imagine what they could’ve done with that money.

Some feminists don’t even pretend to hide what their true intentions are. Heidi Hartmann, president of the Institute for Women’s Police Research, suggested the most common way to address the pay gap in companies “is to give larger raises to the underpaid group and much smaller or even no raises to the group that is seen as overpaid for the work being performed”. And this is exactly what former New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson did. “You bring the guys down to give a little more to the girls,” she said. “I did that at the Times. No one’s happy to get a cut, but too bad.”[15]

Another way women use the government to extract money from men is through taxes. Since men and women both pay taxes we’ll break it down by how much each sex pays in comparison to how much they receive back in benefits. American men pay two thirds of taxes while only receiving one third of welfare while American women pay one third of taxes and receive two thirds of welfare. There are over 200 welfare programs for women and children and none for men in the states. How much does the US government spend on women? 62% of total federal spending for 2014 was on welfare – Social security, unemployment and labour (35%) and Medicare and health care (27%).

It’s no different over here in the UK. 85% of the money saved from benefit and tax changes since the Conservatives came into power in 2010 “has directly come from women’s pockets” a Fawcett Society report found [16]. A guardian article [17] says “to put it another way: £22bn of the £26bn saved from welfare reform has been taken from women.” Make no mistake, women’s suffrage created the welfare state [18]. Both traditionalists and feminists agree male labour should support women but differ on how – traditionalists believe each man should support the women in his life while feminists want all men to support all women regardless of their relation to them.

So there you have it gentlemen. Women have strategically taken away our power by making it illegal for us to exercise our natural superior physical strength and by directing our resources for their own use.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

[1] Men are Smarter than Women, Deal with it! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YruxhWO8QSY

[2] Hard vs Soft Power http://www.e-ir.info/2014/05/14/the-effectiveness-of-soft-hard-power-in-contemporary-international-relations/

[3] Bigger Abroad – http://www.economist.com/node/18178291

[4] China’s Pivotal Role in Hollywood’s Billion Dollar Movie Club http://www.forbes.com/sites/robcain/2015/05/17/chinas-pivotal-role-in-hollywoods-billion-dollar-movie-club/

[5] Obama Visits Dreamworks http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/envelope/cotown/la-fi-ct-obama-dreamworks-20131127-story.html#page=1

[6] Russia Mulls Tough Quota on Foreign Films Ukraine Crisis http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/russia-mulls-tough-quota-foreign-690897

[7] Al Jazeera Empire – Hollywood: Chronicle of an Empire https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ju1rnixFPj4

[8] Teaching in Primary Schools Is Still Seen As A Woman’s Job http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/9849976/Teaching-in-primary-schools-still-seen-as-a-womans-job.html

[9] FSU QB D’Andre Johnson https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGGdlL5U61U

[10] Planning for Wedding Costs http://money.cnn.com/2015/03/12/pf/planning-for-wedding-costs/

[11] Housewife? No I’m Family’s Cheif Executive http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2238439/Housewife-No-Im-familys-chief-executive-90-middle-aged-women-control-paying-bills.html