Women's Personality Sub-Types (Alpha-Beta but Women?)

We discuss common female archetypes and tropes, including the girl boss, supplicant, brown shirt, signaler, and shield wife/Viking woman. We explore the motivations, behaviors, and potential dangers or benefits of each one. The girl boss is insecure and desperate for control, while the supplicant serves whoever has power. Brown shirts police social norms, and signalers craft narratives about themselves. Finally, the devoted shield wife/Viking woman sacrifices everything for her family or small community. We also touch on masked signalers like Queen Elizabeth II and signs you may be marrying a dangerous aesthetics-focused tradwife.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] This is where tradwives can get really dangerous because, you know, we support one form of tradwife that we'll talk about in a second. But tradwives who are more interested in the aesthetics of the tradwife and embodying the aesthetics of the tradwife, they are incredibly dangerous because they do not actually care about the best interests of their partner.

Or their kids, they believe there is an aesthetic way to be a good wife. And so long as they are embodying this narrative aesthetic ideal, they are a good wife, regardless of what the evidence says. And when I say evidence, regardless, if their husband's unhappy, regardless, if their kids are sad, regardless of their husband is spending his meager salary to uphold this fantasy that they've created for themselves, they do not care.

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm Collins:

So we recently did an episode where we were talking about archetypes of men outside of just a simple beta alpha male, because I think that many men optimize around different frameworks. And what I really don't like about the beta at. [00:01:00] Alpha Sigma thing is it implies that all men who are followers are somehow like the lesser category.

Whereas I don't think that that's true. There are different ways you can be a follower. As we point out, you can be like a knight, you know, you don't need to following orders. Being a dentologist is sometimes a useful way to view the world. When you are fighting for a just cause. But you are not the person leading the troops and you have the humility and personal strengths to recognize that you are not.

fit or, or just didn't happen to be in the right situation to be the person leading. But that doesn't mean that you're not meant to play a role or that you are lesser. Until we go over that. And then someone was like, well, what about women? How do women fit? Like, and I don't even know if I've heard like an alpha, beta, whatever thing was women.

So, so yeah, it's more

Simone Collins: like, are, are they like, what number are they out of 10? Are they a mid? Are they a trans wife? Are

Malcolm Collins: they a progressive? If we're going to build like a framework for women that [00:02:00] follows this, this male framework that we built let's go into this. But I also think it's interesting to us because we realized as we were building the framework for women, well, a lot of this also kind of applies to some types of men too.

And so we can help people recognize. When they're falling into dangerous character tropes and types. So do you want to start us off, Simone?

Simone Collins: Yeah, I mean, I think this is going to come to mind for most people. So if you're watching this and you're thinking about types of women, maybe one of the first types you're going to think of is girl boss.

And I think this is because like when women stand out, it's often because they are the, the bossy one who has to be the smartest in the room in charge of everything. I'm going to tell you how it is even if there's someone more competent than them in the room. Like, no, no, no. They cannot have that.

Like often I think their oldest, their eldest siblings. So they're just used to taking command. And they're just like, no, they kind of have that, like, I know better, but also they, they often are in positions of like leadership or power or whatever.

Malcolm Collins: They're very different for male King archetypes. Yes, they are.[00:03:00]

I think is, is very interesting. They often come across as much more. Insecure and their goal isn't often to be a good leader, but to run things because they believe that everyone else is incompetent or not able to run things as well as

Simone Collins: they are. Well, I really wonder what's going on here. A common complaint on this, you know, like where this happens with both like female stars and with female executives of like, oh, well, when I do it.

You, you call me a b***h, but when a guy does it, he's just doing his job, right? Like, Oh, so I'm grumpy.

Malcolm Collins: Or was the same energy often? Well,

Simone Collins: but it's hard. Like, is it because the pitch of the female voice is higher? So, I mean, I wonder that, but I mean, I also, I feel intuitively the same way, you know, like I, I make the same judgments and I just wonder.

How much of it is societal? Or maybe, maybe it's just that like women are doing this from a place of insecurity because they're just not as comfortable [00:04:00] fighting in that sphere. I, I just don't know. Like, I mean, when I look back at some female leaders, however like historical accounts of Queen Elizabeth Cleopatra, Catherine the Great.

I don't get a girl boss feeling from them, to be honest. It's, there's a different archetype and we'll go and talk about that. That

Malcolm Collins: archetype. Cause they weren't, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Simone Collins: And they, they were, they were also acting from places of. A lot of security, honestly, masculinity, girl boss that we, we chose the term girl boss for this because there is a distinct girlish and feminine element to it.

It's not

Malcolm Collins: masculine bossiness. I point out here that you can have men who fall more into the girl boss category. than the king category. 100 percent You can have, although it's much rarer for women to fall more into the king category than the girl boss category. The core difference here between these two categories is I would say it's they are working to, like the girl boss is [00:05:00] much more in the category of Type A personalities, they are working for perfection and, and perfection of action of the organization and of what they are running and not working for a, a, a the community.

And not working to, to lead or to earn respect,

Simone Collins: earning respect, having things their way. It's less about having things the right way. It's their way is

Malcolm Collins: the right way. Right. Well, and this is one of the things with, with, with Kings that is very different is, is Kings are often primarily motivated. By two things.

What I'd say is earning respect, but the other is an inability to take orders from other people at a level of personal pride. It's not that they have trouble taking orders from other people because those orders are bad. Which is typically what the girl boss, the girl boss problem is, is that they look down on other people so much that they just can't trust the orders of anyone else, whereas it's a fear of [00:06:00] being putting oneself in a subordinate position, which is one of the core weaknesses of this king archetype.

One of the core weaknesses of the girl boss archetype is it's just not a particularly good archetype. For actual leadership, like, it works really well at high levels within bureaucracies, but it is fairly bad at actually running things of agency. So it's a skill that is really meant to rise to high positions within bureaucracies, but o