Den Blond Ulven points out that for some reason, other taxonomies simply don’t meet with the same violent objection that one of mine has since the time it was first formulated.
Vox’s Socio-Sexual Hierarchy (SSH) is a taxonomy concerning male interaction. It was derived from his observations and penned during the Game discovery era of males attempting to ascertain and share the labyrinths of the female psyche. The SSH is one of the most important tools in predicting male behavior and is a necessity if one wishes to navigate the world of men as we order each other, with any sense of the interactions involved. It’s predictive power is astonishing and I hold it to levels of usefulness just under those The Philosopher himself penned.
1) It is intuitive to all.
Be it women, low status men, or high status men, everyone recognizes the hierarchy when exposed to it. Women can sniff out low status vs. high status like bloodhounds on the hunt. Men work out the pyramid more exactly, and as such, we have the various ranks. We all intuit the SSH rather young, but Vox’s taxonomy classified the broad patterns more concretely and into a useful system.
2) The SSH is wholly rejected by the mainstream.
This is one telltale sign of the truthfulness or usefulness of whatever is being rejected. The mainstream is opposed to whatever goes against their goals. Game, and the SSH are villainized in the mainstream, leading them huge credence towards their validity. They really do not want Western males recognizing the factors involved in this great game.
3) Other taxonomies are not immediately rejected out of hand, so why this one?
The classification of dogs by The American Kennel Club is not met with such vehement negative response. This is because the SSH deals with humans, has perceived winners and losers, and people don’t want to be losers. Thus, the outrage and denial. Just take a step back and look at it as one would in classifying plants or something else mundane to remove emotion from the equation.
It’s a very good and relevant point. Why do people immediately start crying that it isn’t science to observe that one man is an Alpha and another is a Gamma, when they have never protest the idea of calling one dog a Great Dane and another one a Chihuahua. Where, after all, are the published, peer-reviewed papers that scientifically establish that a Malamute is not a Poodle? Have the genomes of the Basset Hound and the Saluki been fully sequenced and compared?
Taxonomies predate scientody. Therefore, to refer to nonexistent science in an attempt to delegitimize a taxonomy is not only dishonest, it is a category error.
