all 17 comments

[–]IridescentAnacondastrictly dickly 17 insightful - 1 fun17 insightful - 0 fun18 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Money buys space to self-actualize, though not everybody who is wealthy takes advantage of that space.

But money also buys insulation, which protects you from having to perform in ways that are tied to behaviors selected for via evolutionary biology. There are other required performances but they are more abstract.

[–]reluctant_commenter 8 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 0 fun9 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Seconding this. Really concise way to put it.

[–]grammaroo[S] 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

thats very insightful. thank you.

[–]PosthumousScholar 14 insightful - 1 fun14 insightful - 0 fun15 insightful - 1 fun -  (6 children)

My highly cynical answer:

First, we have to note this is a recent development in human culture. In the past, stratification and differentiation in gender roles were most prominent among the elite and least noticeable among the poor e.g. look at Heian Japan, ancient Rome, Byzantine Empire, New Kingdom of Egypt, and so on. Money and leisure time constituted strong incentives to push the upper class towards such a dichotomy: it takes considerable energy and time to learn the nuances of a gender role, especially when said role is constantly in flux depending on the political and cultural milieu of the day. For the impoverished lower class, they are too busy with prosaic duties to maintain attention on the vagaries of a culture far removed from them. That's why in small rural villages, you can find general trends of gender distinction that last thousands of years unchanged.

The main reasons are the elite's primal need to discriminate and the more uniform distribution + access to capital in post-WWII society. Every minor, unpleasant aspect you mention about the poor - ostentatious plastic surgery, insistence on enforcing gender rules, the careful analysis of behavior to distinguish ordinary people from homosexuals - constituted the previous verbal and visual language the rich used to signal their status to each other. Once upon a time only the rich could afford specialized surgery as a matter of leisure; the prejudices and perceptions of country bumpkins were derived from intellectual theories on homosexuality decades in the past (eugenics and sterilization of gays was a popular topic among them too); there are reams of evidence from the Victorian era, 10th century Japan, the courts of Versailles, blah blah blah denoting the exact specifics and ritualistic behaviors that 'proper' men and women were required to observe in the courts. This also applies to the history of makeup (a fascinating subject in itself), skin tone, clothing, the advent of PC language in the professional sphere, and a hundred different things. All these areas, developed and refined by the privileged, gradually trickled down and were absorbed via osmosis.

But now that ordinary people have the money and time to imitate their betters, it no longer makes the upper class special from an ontological perspective. Wealth and status were always justified by the belief rich people had special access to the true nature of the world, an understanding that preclude any disturbance in the social order (1). Instead, they have to adapt new beliefs and behaviors to distinguish themselves from the crass lowlifes and dollar-store replicas. Most of these new philosophies and rules of conduct were nurtured in urban, academic grounds or among revolutionary groups that were foreign to the average American. Tom Wolfe wrote extensively about this in Radical Chic.

Clear displays of gender, still prominent within the lower and middle classes, rank among the first things that must go if one wants to be perceived as enlightened.

(1) If you want proof, I can partially cite the ancient texts from memory where this motif is repeated. It is also a repeating cycle whenever the merchant class accrues enough power to copy the material success of the upper class, embodied by "old money" versus "new money" tensions.

i know our social climate now is to "hate the rich", but why do their personalities and genders seem more decent, human and why do the wealthy heterosexual males just seem more..."gay" or decent or kind?

They are inundated with soft social training from a young age on how to navigate public life. Parents, private school, university, social circles...it takes decades to cultivate this type of demeanor as an automatic reflex. The ones eager for acceptance and ambitious for status adapt the new standards (in this case, based on liberal-centric and progressive philosophy) to progress in the relevant domains. Of course, this largely teaches them how to avoid coming off as bad people instead of installing a sense of morality.

Do wealthy people hide it better? Is it hiding inside of them or are they completely transformed? Why are they exempt from this?

Judging from their terrible behavior behind closed doors - I can only speak from a perspective within Hollywood - they are better at hiding it and far worse when exploiting it.

The elite have an unshakeable tendency to arrogate moral supremacy as their birthright. They co-opt movements to render them impotent, adopt the language of minority groups for probity's sake, and an opportunistic nose for detecting which way the wind is shifting. For me, it's hard to view most of their external performances as little more than facade. I'm too familiar with how they wield their power to give wealthy people the benefit of the doubt.

[–]lavender_menace 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

This was actually insightful and well put together. I remember an article about those trickle down behaviors I read recently. Where the upper classes play with things like gender, fluidity, polyamory etc. and it becomes their signifiers (which lower classes copy and that has disastrous consequences for society at large) but the kids who played with those things return back to Olympus get married have kids and all that shine dissipates. It is fascinating (and terrifying).

[–]PosthumousScholar 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I remember an article about those trickle down behaviors I read recently.

Sounds like Rob Henderson's writings on luxury beliefs.

Where the upper classes play with things like gender, fluidity, polyamory etc. and it becomes their signifiers (which lower classes copy and that has disastrous consequences for society at large) but the kids who played with those things return back to Olympus get married have kids and all that shine dissipates.

You can see this by tracking marriage rates over the last half-century, which trend in the opposite direction of what you'd expect.

[–]exponent2 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

you could simply just say you dont know. a lot of gender is innate and you keep rambling on about social influences by giving us this grand story with a historical perspective that isnt really true. gays and lesbians are gendered differently and their environments dont really affect them the way you say they do. we're discussing deep psychological levels of what people call "gender", not something that comes from cultural instruction.

[–][deleted] 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Sociology is the combination of human psychology and social culture. Both aspects can exist unique to themselves, while a blend can also exist and still be real.

You are not the decider and arbitrator of all that is true. If you didn't want discussion and various POVs, why did you even ask?

[–]PosthumousScholar 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

lot of gender is innate and you keep rambling on about social influences by giving us this grand story with a historical perspective that isn't really true

A lot of gender is innately based on sex but it exists on a spectrum within populations. The enforcement of gender norms, which involves dismissing outliers as aberrant and wrong, isn't natural.

Then refute it. Since you elected to use a general insult, I'll assume you're incapable of doing so.

gays and lesbians are gendered differently and their environments dont really affect them the way you say they do.

In terms of natural inclinations, gays and lesbians have very similar distributions to the heterosexual population with slightly more expression at the opposite ends (male-feminine and female-masculine). That's why you can have butch lesbians, lipstick lesbians, and everything in-between without any contradiction. If anything, you're echoing the TRA mindset that claims gender/sex is constitutive of the other.

Furthermore, we're not talking directly about gays and lesbians. We're talking about gender roles within certain classes.

we're discussing deep psychological levels of what people call "gender", not something that comes from cultural instruction.

Status is one of the most primal drives motivating the individual psyche and it greatly influences how we act in the presence of peers. The existence of this subreddit is the inadvertent byproduct of that.

Ask yourself this: why did the Ts rise to the top of the pile of oppression? Why did they fight to be recognized as such in the first place? Why do they cry foul about prejudice while threatening, demeaning and demanding sex from those who are supposedly their compatriots? Why did this demographic shift engender abandoning and labeling dissidents within the LGB community as TERFs, haters, troublemakers and ignoramuses? And why did previous allies in the public arena - primarily liberal and leftist advocates in the upper-middle and upper classes - fall completely silent, pretending this conflict either didn't exist or was a one-sided account of bigotry?

All these behaviors make sense if you see the major players as attempting to accrue in-group status within social circles where the parameters for what makes one 'good' are nebulous and everchanging.

[–]deliciousdogfoodmy name isnt a puppyplay reference i swear 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Because most people with money have high pressure jobs that demand their attention more than being vapid, shallow cunts.

People born into money or people who get lucky and don't apply themselves further end up the same way.

In most parts of the world capitalism is still largely meritocracy - the higher you climb the harder you have to work, and work builds character.

[–]Q-Continuum-kin 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

This has a point but misses that the vast majority of working class people also fall into this situation of being too busy to care about gender while PMCs tend to work less and be less busy or have jobs that actually encourage them to take classes at work on hyper categorizing everyone based on race and "gender" etc.

[–]usehername 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

It's because in general, the poor feel guilty about not properly fitting in to their gender role. Women don't feel feminine because they have to work, and men don't feel masculine because they can't provide enough for their families, so they overcompensate with their looks.

[–]grammaroo[S] 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

thats insightful. thanks.

[–]GConly 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

But the poorer heterosexuals are, the more pronounced their genders are?

They don't have college educated (indoctrinated) peers to tip toe around. Also not enough time and energy to spend on introspection.

[–]usehername 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

They don't have college educated (indoctrinated)

This is only true if you don't go to college for STEM.

[–]grammaroo[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

i dont know what people mean when they mentioned introspection. you're not the first one to bring it up. i doubt wealthy heterosexuals do this on purpose? it just seems accidental or that they dont even know what theyre doing? It's not like they have a secret ideology theyre hiding from the poorer heterosexuals where they become more "balanced" in their genders to the point where it just seems barely visible and you just end up seeing them as "human". im not proud that i see them that way but there seems to be a large difference in personalities when socioeconomic differences are involved.